


Paper Lips

by withinwithout



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Non-Linear Narrative, Sexual Content, very botched geography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-16 20:27:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 41,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3501737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withinwithout/pseuds/withinwithout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>‘Remember that first ever gallery opening we were both at? I was looking at the ceiling, and then I looked at you and you – you were looking at me.’</i><br/> </p><p>  <i>Harry nods and cracks a small smile, looking out at the park but not replying. Everything he’s thinking is written all over his face, but not in a font Zayn finds legible.</i></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Harry’s world is so huge, so bright and sparkling, and Zayn is just a small blot of ink in the corner of an ocean, fighting to be worth something. </p><p>For the prompt - 'Harry is Zayn's sugardaddy, but something makes it complicated.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paper Lips

**Author's Note:**

  * For [styleslust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/styleslust/gifts).



> Title from Peace's 'Money'. 
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks for such great prompts, I tried to make it just how you like it (won't say more for fear of spoilers!)
> 
> Forgive me for my amateur rendering of both New York and the rich af lifestyle - I wish I had intimate knowledge of both, but we'll have to rely on my imagination for now.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!!

 

**

  
// - //

Do you reflect that all those words will be branded in my memory, and eating deeper eternally, after you have left me?

\- Emily Brontë

// - //

**

 

 

 

The best and worst thing about Zayn Malik is that he’s always a little bit lost.

Not lost in the literal sense – although he does often get actually lost, wandering down an alley filled with rubbish bins looking for the restaurant he was meant to be at half an hour ago – but in the mental, abstract, psychological sense.

His mum always says he’s _away with the fairies_ , and Zayn can accept that, along with _distracted, dreamy, inattentive, dorky, lame_ , all the other things people like to say about him. His awkwardness, his tendency to daydream, leads a lot of people to think he’s not quite worth their attention, somewhat odd in a sweet but unexciting kind of way.

But what might not be immediately apparent is that Zayn’s driven, determined to make real life match up to the things he makes up when you think he’s not paying attention. Zayn’s read and reread so many books, and started and finished so many stories of his own in his head, that he knows life doesn't start when you’re born, or your first word, or your first kiss. 

No, life starts with a _bang_. Not just a little blaze of heat in your chest or a splash of colour in your cheeks but an inferno that consumes you entirely, unmissable, unstoppable.

Zayn read a book once about forest fires. They can be started by lightning, volcanic eruptions, but eighty-eight percent are man-made, an inconsiderate barbeque forgotten in the brush of grass, a careless drop of an un-stubbed cigarette. So he’s not going to wait for his life to start – he’s going to make it happen. That’s how he finds himself age twenty-two in New York, three thousand, three hundred and forty-eight miles from home, scampering around as though he’s got leads clutched in his fists trying to jump start his own life.

He doesn’t know whether his fire will start with a lightning strike or a flick of a match, but it’ll come. This is all Zayn knows, and all Zayn wants, and it’s all he needs to keep him going.

****

 

**to finish The Book About the Cat ******

 

‘What’s that?’

‘A Woo Woo,’ Harry replies nonchalantly, cheeks hollowing around the straw as he takes another sip. He thumbs through the rack Zayn’s been looking at with a slight air of distaste, seemingly unaware that Zayn’s staring at him.

‘What’s that?’ Zayn repeats again.

‘Cocktail. Got vodka and cranberry and … some other shit, I don’t know.’ He lets the straw fall from the corner of his mouth and waves the glass under Zayn’s nose, pink liquid sloshing about threateningly. ‘You want some?’

Zayn looks over his shoulder, incredulous, then back at Harry again with wide eyes. ‘Where’d you get that?’

Harry smiles that smile of his that reminds Zayn of the sun. ‘Relax. They give them out, there’s a bar.’

‘It’s 10am!’ Zayn says, aware that he sounds and probably looks a bit goofy, eyebrows raised and mouth hanging open.

‘You can stop with that before you start. Also, this is the most hideous rack of clothes I’ve ever seen.’

‘Well, I don’t know what I’m doing, do I?’

‘Zayn, it’s shopping. You don’t need a PhD.’

‘You usually buy me stuff, I – I don’t know which parts are meant to go with what, I don’t know what matches, I –’

‘All right, all right.’ Harry’s hand, cool and somewhat wet from clutching the cocktail, finds the space between Zayn’s shoulders and slides down until it’s resting in the dip of his back, slightly too low to be friendly. ‘Let’s just move away from the acrylic shirts before I have an aneurysm.’

Zayn laughs, a proper one where his nose scrunches up and his eyes turn into little half moons, and Harry’s face does something strange as he watches, going soft and slack and then tight in the space of seconds, the pull of the dimple in his cheek, the stretch of his lips across his teeth.

Regrettably, his hand drops away from Zayn’s back a little while later, chewing on his straw absently as they traipse along the white Roman marble of the department store. Zayn’s shoes scuff against the floor in that unbecoming way they still do, but a woman nods at Zayn, smiling and dipping her head, and Zayn feels it, that pull in his stomach, like he belongs. The thrill of respect curls up in the cage of his ribs, lounging there majestically, and Zayn smiles a genuine, warm smile back, his tongue pressed to the back of his teeth.

Harry stops dead. Zayn bumps into his shoulder, winces and considers swearing, then notices the Gucci sign straight ahead, glaring at him warningly, and he bites his tongue.

‘You’ve got a suit for tonight already, yeah?’ Harry asks slowly, eyes flickering around like he’s figuring something out.

‘The Balmain one, yeah.’

‘And you’ve got your watch.’ Harry smiles, a little sheepishly, running his thumb across the Rolex on Zayn’s wrist. Zayn’s heart blows up like a bomb in his chest, the heat of the explosion coursing through him till he’s warm all over.

‘Yeah,’ he breathes.

‘So what are we shopping for?’

‘I… don’t know?’

Harry grins, stepping forward so that their toes brush, that they’re close enough to kiss. Zayn’s astounded by this proximity in public, but, always eager, has half a mind to grab the back of Harry’s head and pull him closer when Harry says, ‘Fun. We’re shopping for fun. You’re having _fun.’_

Zayn licks his lips, his mouth opening and closing wordlessly.

‘Welcome to my world, Zaynie,’ Harry murmurs, the tips of his fingers brushing Zayn’s, as though he might tangle them together. ‘Took you long enough.’

 

+++ 

 

Zayn and Harry didn’t meet at a party – not the kind of parties Zayn knows, with sweaty bodies and pumping music and pills on tongues, and not the kind of parties Harry knows, designer clothes and canned jazz and the same looking pills on the same looking tongues, just more loftily priced. They didn’t meet in the street, or in a shop, or at a bar, or somewhere romantic, like a park or a gallery or a rain-soaked bus stop. They met when Zayn was at work, holed up in the corner of Nick’s studio, while Zayn was sucking pesto out of his t-shirt.

Essentially, the pesto accident was wholeheartedly Louis’ fault. Louis made Zayn this pesto, mozzarella, chicken and avocado sandwich for lunch, shoving it at Zayn on his way out that morning.

‘For you, darling!’ he had chirped, aiming a fond kind of punch at Zayn’s arm.

Zayn only grinned, replied, ‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ because Louis always tests his new ideas out on Zayn first, and even when the offerings are clearly just an inherently wrong mishmash of ingredients, Zayn still eats them because it makes Louis happy.

Making people happy is really the underlying basis of all decisions in Zayn’s life.

And there was nothing _wrong_ with that particular sandwich, not like the goat’s cheese and marmalade one he made the previous week, but the pesto must have been a cheap brand because it was too runny, and before Zayn could think to fashion a napkin out of something, it was halfway down his front, a moss green stain on his white t-shirt.

‘Fuck,’ Zayn mumbled, lifting his shirt up to suck the pesto from it, and it’s only then that he looked up. Looked up and saw Harry.

Harry raised his eyebrows questioningly, phone pressed to his ear, and Zayn just stared at him for a moment. Green irises framed with dark eyelashes, a mop of curly hair held back away from his face by sunglasses, a soft, intrigued smile that provoked a dimple in his cheek. Zayn took all of this in, staring and staring, before realising that his tongue was still hovering wetly against his shirt, and in an inelegant kind of flail he rearranged himself so he was draped semi-casually against the desk.

Harry smiled again, not unkindly, not smugly either which was noble of him considering Zayn was practically dribbling at the sight of him, and Zayn felt half in love already. The sound of his voice, deep with a distinctive slur over the consonants, the tell-tale drag of the vowels pinpointing him as – and _what are the chances?_ – English, _Northern_ , had half in love rocketing up to three quarters, maybe even two thirds.

He can remember the way Harry surveyed Nick’s painting propped against the wall nearest the door, brushing his fingertips lightly over the canvas, remember that Harry wanted to touch. He can remember Harry’s hair curling over the back of his neck and grazing the collar of his suit jacket. He can remember the confidence, the kind of poise and assurance that Zayn had only ever seen in films as Harry strolled over and stuck out a large, ring-laden hand. He can remember scrambling to take it, in his haste forgetting to wipe his clammy hands on his jeans, and he can remember how his heart decided to have a fucking _field day_ , knocking loudly in his chest like it wanted to introduce itself. And he can remember Harry’s smile, the smile that makes Zayn think of the sun. Not the sun in August, stifling and heavy, but the soft, lazy sun in autumn, the kind of sun you want to wrap yourself up in and _devour_ , drink it slow like bourbon until your insides are molten hot and burning. He thought that on the first day, and he thinks that today, every day, whenever Harry grins enough that the skin at the corners of his eyes wrinkles.

Zayn has trouble concentrating a lot of the time and conversations usually go by in a blur, but this conversation with Harry didn’t even feel like it was happening in real time; it felt like someone was fast-forwarding it, and Zayn could only pick out small snatches of what they were saying to each other, like he was listening from far away.

They start talking about Nick, of course, because Harry introduced himself as ‘ _Harry, Nick’s friend. Where is he?_ ’ and Zayn was obligated, as Nick’s assistant, to spin some lie about him meeting someone Very Important so as not to reveal his true whereabouts (the tanning salon, of course, because Nick just has to be bronzed all year round).

And then – ‘Where’s your suit from?’ Zayn asked stupidly. He cringed as soon as he said it, but couldn’t bring himself to look away from Harry, even if he was embarrassing himself.

‘Lanvin,’ Harry responded easily, smiling in that horribly lovely way, and Zayn thought _huh,_ because whenever he’d seen it written down he thought you said it phonetically, not all French like Harry says it.

And then they talked about the book they both happen to be reading, an epic Murakami that Harry confesses he’s struggling with. Zayn nearly ruined the entire plot in his enthusiasm, in his quivering delight that he and Harry – he and _Harry_ , this expensive, beautiful creature – had something in common, but Harry laughed and covered his ears, shying away from him and squawking ‘ _No, no, don’t!_ ’. Something in Zayn actually _blew up_ , an alarming kind of explosion somewhere behind his ribcage at the image of Harry cowering away, a smile on his lips, his eyes bright and playful.

Then the blurriness; Zayn can’t remember much, except that Harry asked polite, uncomplicated questions and Zayn failed to answer any of them like a normal human, too in awe, and then somehow – God, _how?_ – Zayn started talking about his illustrations.

‘It’s why I’m here,’ Zayn said, shoving his sketchbook at Harry without entirely realising what he was doing, eyes wide and excited. ‘I’ve been sending them to publishers and authors, trying to get a lead but I – well, no such luck, so far anyway. I have to illustrate stories that already exist, you know, so I’ve been doing _Harry Potter_ and _Narnia_ mostly, and I did some for _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ but I… what?’

Harry grinned, a big dimpled smile, pink lips sweet enough to bite stretching across white teeth, and then after a moment’s pause, ‘Do you know who I am?’

Zayn hesitated, looked away from Harry at last and picked at the bent cover of the Murakami novel, before glancing at Harry through his eyelashes. ‘Should I?’

Even then Zayn wanted to chew the smile right off his face, wrap his fingers around Harry’s ribs beneath the expensive suit, climb into Harry’s lap to count his eyelashes. And even then, Harry shrugged modestly – Zayn’s first sign of many to come that Harry is kind and brilliant and unphased by people lacking social competency – and went to leave, saying he’d ring for Nick later.

‘I never caught your name?’ Harry asked simply as he lingered at the door, hands in his pockets, gaze steady.

Zayn briefly deliberated using a pseudonym, something less ostentatiously Bradistani than Zayn, something cool and intriguing and _New York_ , like Blaze or Bear or Indigo. ‘Uh – Zayn. It’s Zayn. Zayn Malik.’

Harry nodded, then smiled. ‘So… _Zayn_ ,’ he said, like he was tasting it.

And Harry Styles managed to make Zayn’s name, the one he’s had forever, sound like a fucking song.

That’s how Zayn and Harry started, sugar-sweet and easy. It was only after Nick told Zayn, some time later, that Harry was a millionaire, an art dealer responsible for the turn in Nick’s very own career, a man with an apartment on Fifth and six sports cars and a yacht floating somewhere in Long Island, that Zayn thought maybe he was a bit out of his depth here. He makes your career, Nick told him. _Dealing used to be about buying and hoping for the best, but with Styles, he buys and the market follows. He could buy a finger painting from a baby and the next one would sell for a hundred grand. He fucking owns this market, you get it? He smells out fucking money._

This should have scared Zayn off, but he wasn’t given a chance. Harry kept coming back to see Nick, conveniently whenever Nick was out, and then those visits turned into lunches, into dinners, into $110-a-head sushi that had Zayn’s head swimming, into drinks in gold-lit bars with brushes of their knees and dimpled smiles that left Zayn aching hopelessly for him in his H&M jeans.

It was something out of a dream.

 

+++ 

 

They head out of Barney’s empty-handed and go for brunch at a restaurant Harry likes that overlooks the park.

Harry’s a fan of places in New York that have some degree of elevated observation of the park – restaurants, bars, his own apartment on Fifth Avenue – but something about the park, a manicured slice of greenery, boxed in by metal and concrete, makes Zayn sad, so instead he’s staring at the ceiling.

Lots of people have said that Zayn’s a bit stare-y, but it’s more that he gets distracted. When Harry leads him into the restaurant, he begins by looking at the way the light reflects off the glass of the chandelier in soft chinks of gold and silver and white, and then moves onto the patterns on the seat cushions, soft swirls in blood red and champagne gold that he traces with his fingernails. It’s only after this that he takes to his old pastime of looking appreciatively at the ceiling.

His head’s tilted back on his neck, hands resting limply in his lap, eyes glazed over with appreciation, and someone could start a fire over by the bar and he probably wouldn’t notice.

‘You’re always doing that,’ Harry says, smiling as Zayn looks down and grins at him bashfully.

‘Sorry.’

‘No, no, I like it.’ Harry leans back in his chair, surveying Zayn with soft eyes.

‘Remember that first ever gallery opening we were both at? I was looking at the ceiling, and then I looked and you – you were looking at me.’

Harry nods and cracks a small smile, looking out at the park but not replying. Everything he’s thinking is written all over his face, but not in a font Zayn finds legible.

‘I just think – the ceiling’s more interesting, init?’ Zayn goes on.

‘Than what?’

‘Than… than people in Gustav Klimt printed vests. Or, like, weird shirts. There’s only so much you can look at tastefully sheer shirts –’

‘I like tastefully sheer shirts!’

‘– and that first time my suit was uncomfortable and my wine tasted like piss –’

‘That’s because your suit was Topman. And you think all wine tastes like piss.’

‘– and Nick had a purple suit on, do you remember?’

Harry laughs, shaking his head, but he does remember. It was the kind of suit you couldn’t forget in a hurry, a suit that had made Zayn embarrassed to collect it from the dry-cleaners.

Zayn’s eyes cloud over with the memory, pressing his leg into Harry’s under the tablecloth. Zayn’s mind works in this kind of way – he tangles up memories and thoughts of the future with the present, never quite focussing on the now in favour of the _what has been_ , the _what could be_. They’re different in that way.

‘I remember I was thinking about how – how _cool_ it would be if all conversations could be like, automatic, you know?’ Zayn wets his lips, leaning forward towards Harry instinctively, like he always does. ‘People kept asking me why I was in New York, and I was thinking, like – imagine if we all had a little autopilot switch, if we could talk to people for hours without any brain engagement whatsoever. It’s cool, isn’t it? Modern day automatons.’

Harry just smiles, a leisurely crawl of a smile, watching Zayn with a kind of warmth on his face that makes Zayn feel important. Harry always makes Zayn feel important.

 

+++

 

‘You and Harry,’ Nick had stage-whispered the night of the first gallery opening. ‘You’re friends?’

Zayn couldn’t think of a reply that didn’t involve _I think so, but also has he said anything about wanting to fuck me?_ , so he just nodded in the absence of something appropriate and looked up at the ceiling.

‘You’re stealing my best friend!’ Nick laughed, elbowing Zayn with a little too much enthusiasm, and Zayn pretended it didn’t hurt. He was still looking at the ceiling.

Nick’s a belligerently loud man, with a kind of carefree fluidity people would buy if it were bottled. And Zayn likes him, he really does. It’s just – Zayn’s not cut out for this kind of life, the parties and the gossiping and the weirdly ugly fashion choices. It's not Nick's fault that Zayn doesn’t like this stuff, however much he tries. Nick’s never been mean, or unfair, or demanding. He’s nice.

He always _has_ been nice, right from the start. Right from the moment Zayn was told ‘intern’ a year ago, when Nick strolled into Louis’ restaurant in a fur coat that alarmingly made him resemble a polar bear.

‘Fuck me!’ Louis had exclaimed from behind the pass, holding up a frying pan as a shield. ‘Call animal control!’

Zayn laughed – nearly fell off his seat laughing – but behind scarily metallic sunglasses, Nick didn’t find it funny. Or maybe he did; Zayn’s never got the hang of his humour.

Still, now he’s Nick the Polar Bear’s assistant, or as Louis calls it, _servant_. And none of this – the events Zayn has to go now, the old Topman suit he has to drag out of his wardrobe every week, the fake smile he has to plaster on his face – is Nick's fault, which is why Zayn smiled and went along with it, because Zayn can't say no to inherently nice people.

‘Give me the deets, Malik,’ Nick went on, elbowing Zayn again. ‘How long have you been hanging out? Is he the reason you forgot to take my dog for a walk for the whole of last week?’

Zayn dropped his chin to glance shiftily at Nick, but instead, somehow, he managed to catch Harry’s eye across the room. These things are always atrociously lit, either in semi-darkness resulting in accidental groping, or overwhelming clinical brightness frighteningly reminiscent of a hospital. That evening it was stage-light bright, and Harry was watching him, wineglass in hand, a little smile on his lips, and even then Harry made Zayn feel important. Made Zayn’s skin feel too tight, made his heart feel too big, made him feel important.

‘I don’t know,’ Zayn mumbled, looking away from Harry because he suddenly felt like he might throw up. ‘Like, I don’t know. A month, maybe?’

Nick started rambling on about something else – maybe still Harry, but Zayn can’t be sure because he stopped listening a while ago, when –

‘Talking about me?’

And Harry’s there, looking at Zayn with a conspiratorial smirk, and Zayn, like a fourteen year old, had had to choke back a small, elated giggle, coupled with the peculiar desire to go up in flames.

He was wearing a red and black striped suit, his hair tucked behind his ear, and his lips were so pink and plump and soft it was fucking criminal, and he should have looked ridiculous but he actually looked so, so good, and all of a sudden Zayn just wanted to be folded in half again and again, like paper, until he could fit in Harry’s pocket, right by his heart.

‘Trying to. Zayn’s a little bit away with the fairies,’ Nick said with an inappropriate amount of relish, emphasising the fairies, because Nick's the type of person who enjoys clapping people on the back and cheerily bellowing their flaws.

‘You do look a bit distracted,’ said Harry.

‘I'm absent-minded,’ Zayn corrected quietly. ‘It's dispositional, not behavioural.’

Harry grinned into his glass, nodding.

Harry found Zayn later, leaning against the wall outside with a cigarette dangling from his lips, more comfortable out in the cold against a dirty brick wall than inside with everyone else. Harry stood there a little awkwardly, hands shoved in his designer pockets, a hesitant look on his face.

‘Hey,’ Harry had said, and then, smiling like he was rehashing an old joke, ‘Did you finish the Murakami? Has he found out what happened to the cat yet?’

Zayn blinked incredulously. ‘All that other shit’s going on and you’re … thinking about the cat?’

‘You never know. Could be important.’

Zayn’s heart inexplicably felt like it had been shoved in a blender, so he decided not to reply.

They stood in silence for a while watching the street in front of them, mostly deserted except for a stray ginger cat picking through the bins opposite them, his fur illuminated dimly by a lone street lamp. Normally Zayn would have been thinking about the cat, wondering where he lived or if he had a family, wondering if he ever bursts into song like Thomas O’Malley, but for once he was too worked up for his imagination to run away with him. He just waited, hypersensitive to Harry’s arm pressed against his and how he could hear Harry breathing quietly, in and out, in and out, until he felt like he was going fucking crazy, so he turned slightly and said, ‘Are you ever gonna read the book?’

‘Which book?’

‘The – the book about the cat?’

Harry seemed a bit taken aback, a tiny furrow appearing between his eyebrows, but then he shrugged, smiled. ‘Promise.’

‘Are you good at keeping promises?’ Zayn asked, shamelessly flirting now.

Harry shrugged again, flirting back. ‘You can be the judge of that.’

A small silence fell over them, full to the brim of everything unspoken, everything un- _done_. ‘Is this Lan-vin?’ Zayn asked stupidly in desperation to break it, tugging lightly at the sleeve of Harry’s suit.

Harry smiled gently. ‘You mean Lanvin,’ he corrected.

‘’S what I said.’

‘You didn’t say it right.’

Zayn resisted the urge to roll his eyes. ‘Is it though? The suit, I mean.’

‘Did you know or was that a guess?’

‘Lucky guess.’ Zayn dropped his cigarette and stubbed it out with the scuffed toe of his shoe. ‘I don’t think I know the difference between any of them.’

‘What? Suits?’

‘Yeah and, you know. Designers in general.’

Harry laughed. ‘You do Nick’s dry cleaning and you don’t know any designers?’

‘I don’t often pay attention,’ Zayn said with another small shrug, a bit concerned Harry might be taking the piss. The thought of it made his heart seize, freezing in his chest like a deer caught in headlights, and _please don’t, Harry_ , is all he can remember thinking. _Please, please, please_. ‘It’s not like it’s important.’

‘It’s not?’

‘I’m not doing an internship with him to learn the difference between Saint Laurent and Armani.’

Harry bit down on his lip, cocking his head to the side curiously. His lips were so, so pink even in the dim light that Zayn can remember them now, raspberry-jam-pink, and Zayn stared for much longer than he should have. ‘No, I suppose not.’

Another long pause. ‘Why _are_ you doing an internship with him?’ Harry asked. ‘I’ve always wondered.’

‘Need money,’ Zayn replied shortly. Harry’s got an intense look when he’s fully engaged with someone, powerful and focused and almost too much, and all that attention made Zayn’s blood feel thicker back then, his gaze darting everywhere skittishly before landing on the floor. ‘Have to do something with myself before someone picks me up for illustration. I thought that I – that working with him would help me build up contacts.’

‘Have you?’

‘Nah. I’m shit at talking to people.’

‘With a face like that? Why?’

Zayn blinked at him, stunned. ‘I, uh…’ Pause. ‘What’s with all the questions?’

Harry smiled leisurely, let it spread across his face smooth and agonisingly slow, the dimple teasing in his cheek before it appeared properly, and _God,_ Zayn can see that smile now, the smile that could part fucking oceans and split boulders in two and carve a hole in the sky. ‘I like you.’

The entire universe tilted sideways then, and that was it – the forest fire, the inferno burning him up. Zayn forgot how to breathe, and he was trying to think about something else – the lady that looked like Miss Havisham inside, Nick’s purple suit, the cat across the road – _anything_ that’d stop him from just collapsing into a puddle of Topman suit and fragile bones on the floor, when Harry reached out and touched the stretch of skin just below Zayn’s cheekbone. His fingertips were so soft, just like his eyes and his smile, just like his lips, and Zayn didn’t feel much like an uninvited guest in the real world anymore. His fantasy had finally caught up with him.

And he’d been trying to decide for a long time whether Harry's lips tasted of something sweet like cherries or raspberries or candyfloss, or something warm like sunlight or Christmas or fire, and he was wondering right then whether kissing Harry would feel as good as climbing into a bed wrapped in clean sheets, or putting on warm clothes when you're sopping wet after being caught in the rain, or the first beat of the shower water after a long day, or –

Harry’s fingers grabbed at Zayn’s hip, yanking him closer so that Zayn had to steady himself against the wall, and then he was kissing him.

‘I’ve wanted you for so long,’ Harry said against Zayn’s mouth, and he didn’t have to add ‘ _and I always get what I want_ ’ for Zayn to know it was true.

Zayn finally got an answer for what Harry tastes like – whiskey and cherries and, _yeah_ , fucking money.

 

**to watch all the _Batmans_**

 

After finishing brunch they walk back to Harry’s place on Fifth Avenue, smiling their hello to Jerry the doorman before ascending to the penthouse – Harry’s penthouse – in the lift.

Zayn watches Harry type away on his phone, and even from this far away, Zayn can’t help but get a little distracted by the sharp cut of his cheekbones, the soft curve of his upper lip. He’s still staring when the lift opens and Harry looks up, smiling at Zayn when he catches his eyes.

Harry knows Zayn always stares. Zayn’s not sure if this is a good thing or not.

He’s in an abnormally reflective mood as Harry fusses around making them drinks, barking at someone down the phone pressed into his shoulder by his cheek. There’s something different about the room, or maybe just something different about the air in it, Zayn’s not sure.

Zayn’s seen it all before countless times, but he wanders into the living room assessing the situation around him like it’s the first time. It’s a mess, not like Zayn and Louis’ pitiful cupboard of a flat, but a farmyard of objects that have been shoved here or dropped there, a disordered museum of Harry’s life. There’s an old jukebox standing incongruously in the middle of the room, a record player balancing precariously on a little table much too small for it. There are books everywhere, face down and spine cracked to suggest Harry just abandoned them midway through, and there’s a guitar in the corner, and a Turkish rug hanging on the wall, children’s board games stacked haphazardly by the window. A sofa, upholstered in liver-coloured satin, resembles something out of an old X-rated film. Three neon signs that Zayn recognises as Tracey Emin’s are bolted to the wall, face to face with the world’s biggest television, looming ominously like a comic book villain on the wall, which Zayn learned early on Harry doesn’t use.

(‘Don’t watch TV,’ Harry had said cheerfully, months and months ago, after they’d just fucked, half-clothed, for the first time on Harry’s satin sofa. ‘My mum doesn't believe in advertising inside the house.’

Zayn stared.

‘Or we could watch a film?’ Harry said after a stagnant pause, although this was said with a bit more enthusiasm. ‘Those I watch. What are you into?’

‘Action and that,’ Zayn mumbled.

‘ _Action and that?_ ’ Harry repeated, smiling.

‘Yeah, like Batman and ... yeah.’

‘I've never seen Batman. Or, I have, but I fell asleep’

Zayn allowed a moment for this to sink in. ‘Well, that is... You should. You need to.’

‘All right, I will.’ Zayn raised his eyebrows in a doubtful kind of way, and Harry frowned before smiling brilliantly and then in a blur of semi-clothed limbs, quite unexpectedly, clambered into Zayn’s lap. ‘Promise, Zaynie.’)

There’s also a brusque Bavarian writing bureau, which Zayn opened once, just out of curiosity, to find a collection of gig tickets and postcards and old receipts, along with an old French magazine from 2006, a crumbling _Rolling Stone_ , an ambiguously pornographic issue of some European volume. And then, Zayn’s favourite, the canvas nailed to the wall beside a glass drinks cabinet. A real-life, actual, authentic Hockney.

The first time Zayn saw that was the moment he knew he was very, very out of his depth.

‘Are you all right?’ Zayn asks carefully as Harry brings their drinks over to the sofa, a glass of whisky each. It’s barely 1 in the afternoon, and Harry’s been drinking all morning.

‘Fine,’ Harry replies, collapsing onto the satin pornstar sofa and twisting the rings on his fingers nervously. This isn’t the Harry that Zayn knows. Zayn’s Harry tells wild stories, laughs with his eyes shut and his head thrown back, bites unapologetically at Zayn’s skin. Zayn’s Harry smiles and looks like something out of a novel and squeezes Zayn’s fingers under tables and Zayn feels like all the air’s been kicked out of him. Except today. He’s different today.

Zayn plants himself next to Harry, curling in so close he can feel the heat rolling off him, can smell him – something soft and light and comfortably expensive, so familiar it’s soothing – can see the light flush on his neck, the skin tight and begging to be bitten. Abruptly Zayn’s very aware of himself, of the flimsiness of his limbs and the sharp pull of his heart and the heat of his blood under his skin.

There’s a slightly stagnant pause, and Zayn waits for Harry to say something but he doesn’t, so he finds himself looking at the Tracey Emins. _Move Me. Trust Me. Never Again!_

‘Work problem?’

‘Hmm? Oh, no. Nothing.’

‘You’re being a bit weird,’ Zayn manages eventually, glancing at Harry with an uneasy pinch between his eyebrows.

Harry looks back at him, teeth biting down on his lower lip. ‘I’m just … stressed about later.’

‘About your speech?’

‘Mmm,’ Harry says absently, sticking his finger in his whiskey to stir the ice. They chink obnoxiously against the side of the glass as Harry swirls them around, and when he’s done he sucks his finger into his mouth, far enough that his lips brush his ring. Harry wears a lot of rings, one on almost every finger. Zayn spent a lot of time before the first time they fucked wondering whether Harry kept his rings on when he jacked off, whether he liked the cool drag of them against his skin.

‘Do you… know who’s coming later?’ Harry asks after a while.

Zayn frowns, confused, because Zayn’s made it pretty clear over the last five months that he doesn’t give a shit about the people Harry’s forced to hang out with at these kind of events. Harry looks so concerned, though, gloriously pink lips pouty and bright green eyes anxious and soft, well-cared for skin puckered. So Zayn leaps up with quick, lithe limbs, pulls Harry to his feet, and puts both his hands on Harry’s shoulders.

Zayn imagines all the pheromones clouding the air between them, so many they're jostling for position like burly rugby players, and then he imagines the almost palpable tension engulfing them as if they're trapped inside a soap bubble, obscuring the rest of the world until they're little more than a drowsy mist.

But this isn’t his imagination anymore. This is real, and his heart’s beating to the promise of that. _Re-al. Re-al. Re-al._

‘I don’t care who’s there,’ Zayn says softly, brushing his lips against Harry’s and tucking a curl behind his ear. ‘I only care about you.’

Harry blinks down at him, swallowing hard, and then he curves his hand around Zayn’s neck and pulls him in, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth before kissing him.

 

+++

 

Zayn’s a quick learner, and Zayn learned Harry quickly. Before all this he spent two years sleeping on strangers’ sofas all over Europe, he does Bikram yoga every Wednesday morning, and he tries not to wear the same clothes twice. His sister back in England doesn’t work, she ‘Protests’ (said with emphasis, as though it was capitalised) against the government and war and child labour and so on, and also happens to be fucking a politician. He’s an Aquarius and believes wholeheartedly in the importance of astrology. He likes whiskey on ice, sips it delicately rather than knocking it back like a shot the way Zayn’s used to. When he’s not in a suit he wears raucously patterned shirts unbuttoned to the inexplicable moth on his stomach. There’s an air of subdued intelligence about him, an eagerness to listen that Zayn hasn’t seen in anyone else.

So Zayn finds that, over the months with Harry, he talks about himself more than he ever has done in his life, spouting stupid stories like the time he and Louis accidentally ordered twenty pizzas instead of two and hid behind the sofa so they wouldn’t get charged, about his illustrations, and books he’s read, and mad ideas he’s come up with. And when Harry speaks, Zayn listens just as enthusiastically, even when the stories seem too mad to be true, like the wild tale of Harry’s Big Break, which involves a visit to the Musée D’Orsay and the realisation that back in Cheshire, the little old lady in the flat below – Harry used to buy her shopping for her every Friday afternoon – unknowingly had a Courbet hanging on her mantelpiece.

‘I’m talking about a landscape, obviously,’ Harry assured Zayn the first time he told the story. ‘Little Gladys didn't have an oil-on-canvas vagina suspended above the fireplace.’

Zayn’s young, naïve, he knows it, and his mum always said he’s too trusting. He just wanders into trusting people, is the thing. One day he’ll be guarded, holding all his cards close to his chest just in case someone crumples and tears and ruins them, and the next he’s eagerly handing the entire deck over in suit order, carefully arranged so that the hearts are first.

He’s always been like this, ever since he can remember. In secondary school, he let people copy his English homework, or borrow his trainers for P.E., or have his only chocolate bar at lunch, if they smiled at him enough, even though they never spoke to him in the playground in front of everyone else. Even when he was eighteen, nineteen, he’d come home with a frown, upset because yesterday he’d given a man outside the train station his last ten quid to buy a train ticket home – he’d lost his wallet and he desperately needed to get home for his daughter’s ballet recital – only to see him the next day saying the exact same thing to somebody else.

That’s always been Zayn’s problem, though. The lines just get so blurred.

He just trusts and trusts and trusts. And he believes Harry whole-heartedly, anything he says, because that’s the way love is meant to work. And he does love Harry, the way he makes Zayn feel safe and warm, able to do _anything_ , like the curl of Harry’s fingers has Zayn burning up into ashes, whipping freely through the air, tangling up in the wind and brushing the clouds. That’s what’s important – that Harry makes Zayn feel invincible – and Zayn reminds himself of that when their relationship, without Zayn’s permission, shifts. Around April, Harry started spending money on Zayn unapologetically, dismissing any squeak of protest Zayn tried to make with a bite of a kiss and a ‘money means _nothing_ , Zayn’, until Zayn felt stupid making a big deal out of it.

And so he just closes his eyes and lets it happen with a smile, drifts away until he’s brought back down to earth by Harry’s lips on his skin, Egyptian cotton sheets against his back, soft whispers as Harry rocks his hips into Zayn, harder and harder each time, splitting him open, until Zayn feels like he’s Harry’s from the inside out.

 

+++

 

Zayn kisses Harry until he stops looking anxious, until the pucker between his eyebrows disappears and a different sort of emotion engulfs his expression – _want._

He manages to walk them backwards until Harry’s back is against the drinks cabinet, and Zayn’s kissing him all but _frantically_ like he always does, in a way that often makes Harry grin and say something like _God, you’re so young_. He cups Harry’s jaw as he presses his tongue against the seam of Harry’s warm lips, shifting so that the entire length of his body is touching some part of Harry’s.

Harry’s breath catches at the back of his throat as he opens his mouth and lets Zayn’s tongue in, and Zayn claws at the back of Harry’s neck, trying to pull him closer. That’s just it – they’re never close enough for Zayn’s liking, not even when they’re properly kissing like this, breath hot and tongues rough, the pull of Harry’s teeth against Zayn’s lower lip, the ache of his fingers on Zayn’s hip.

‘Eager,’ Harry says into Zayn’s mouth, smirking, and Zayn bites at his lip.

‘Fuck off.’

‘Polite.’

‘What, like you?’ Zayn asks, grasping at the hard bulge of Harry’s dick under his jeans. Harry gasps and rolls his hips forward into Zayn’s palm.

‘I have great manners.’

‘Oh yes, this has all been very polite,’ Zayn says, and then, trying at a joke before he can stop himself, ‘Wonder how these kind of manners would fare in front of the Queen?’ at the same time something in his brain screams _No!_

Harry pulls back, eyebrows arched, because nothing quite gets people going like mentioning an ancient monarch, and then there’s a weird stillness between them. Zayn’s truly ready to let embarrassment swallow him whole, preparing for the satin sofa to morph into a giant satin pornstar mouth and gulp him down to a dark place so he'll never be seen again, when Harry strokes his fingers across Zayn's cheek gently.

Zayn peeks at him through his eyelashes, and finds Harry smiling. ‘You're so sweet.’

Zayn's heart, only moments ago wallowing, soars. ‘You – you really – yeah?’ he mumbles elegantly.

Harry nods, smile widening, dimple blooming in his cheek. ‘People like you should come with a warning.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you're gonna kill someone with it, one day.’ Harry brushes his thumb across Zayn's lip, still smiling.

 _Hopefully you_ , Zayn wants to say, but he’s aware that sounds like a death threat so he licks Harry's thumb instead, sucking it into his mouth until Harry's eyes go dark and he shifts forward again, wrenching his thumb from Zayn's mouth to replace it roughly with his tongue.

They kiss and kiss until Zayn’s so hard he’s gone light-headed, and when Harry pulls back, Zayn actually _whines_. Before either of them can dwell on it he shoves Harry back against the door of the cabinet, rolling his hips against his. There’s a loud clatter inside the cabinet, a vague smash of glass.

‘Fuck,’ Zayn gasps, jolting back like he’s been electrocuted. ‘Shit, Harry –’

Harry reaches out for Zayn, tugging him back in by the collar of his shirt. ‘Don’t care.’

‘I’m so sorry, I –’

Harry snorts into Zayn’s neck, mouthing at the skin wetly. ‘ _Really_. I don’t care.’

Zayn gulps, closing his eyes and trying to collect himself as Harry’s tongue licks stripes up his neck. He never knows how to reign himself in when he’s with Harry. Back when they first started fucking, when Harry first started buying him shit, Zayn had tried phrases such as ‘How can I repay you …’ in his best sultry voice, but then realised he sounded like he was prostituting himself and cut that short. Now, Harry just nuzzles his nose into Zayn’s neck, mouth closing around his clavicle contentedly, and Zayn’s still not sure what to do with himself. This is all very nice but – not enough.

There’s nothing worse than real life not living up to your imagination, there’s no disappointment like realising the world isn’t quite as bright and shining as the one you’ve built up in your head. Zayn feels it nearly every day, but Harry’s too pretty and too nice and too special to ever fall victim to that, and he’s never disappointed Zayn. So Zayn wants to give back; he wants Harry to fall apart.

He yanks Harry’s head back by his hair, smiling wickedly when Harry hisses, his lips pouting. ‘Tell me what you want?’ Zayn tries, lips ghosting over Harry’s.

Harry just smiles like he always does, and Zayn’s blood heats up. ‘I’m easy.’

 _No._ ‘Tell me, Harry,’ Zayn insists, a little bossily, jutting his hips forward again. Harry doesn’t talk during sex, not like Zayn, and it frustrates him more than anything. He nips at Harry’s mouth.

Harry’s big, warm hands, previously resting carefully on the small of Zayn’s back, slide down over Zayn’s sharp hips to cup his bum. ‘I love it when you go all authoritarian on me.’

Zayn feels slightly patronised, and he bites Harry’s lip as punishment, dragging it back hard so that Harry flinches and whimpers. ‘I’ll do whatever you want me to.’

Harry doesn’t seem to be playing along so Zayn kisses him again, tongue sliding in his mouth as he slips his fingers through Harry’s hair and pulls it free from the bun so he can get fistfuls of it, yanking at it until Harry moans a little, squeezing Zayn’s arse tightly. _There we go._

He starts opening up Harry’s shirt, fumbling with the buttons carefully because it probably costs more than a flight back to Manchester, but despite his efforts, Harry grinds his hips against Zayn’s at the wrong moment and a button is compromised, flying off to the left and bouncing along the oak floor.

Zayn rips his mouth away from Harry’s to watch it with wide eyes, an apology blooming on his lips, but this time Harry’s not laughing. He grips Zayn’s chin and pulls him back roughly, lips working messily at the corner of Zayn’s mouth.

‘Talk,’ Zayn instructs, hoping he sounds assertive rather than whiny and petulant.

‘So hot,’ Harry mumbles, swallowing the vowels as he bite at Zayn’s jaw. ‘Since the first time I saw you in that pesto shirt. You’re so fucking hot.’

Zayn grins in triumph and shoves Harry away from him, so hard there’s another ominous crash inside the cabinet. He takes a moment to look at him, hair wild and curling around his face, the obscene wetness of his mouth, red and swollen, the rise and fall of his bare chest. Zayn kisses one of the birds below Harry’s collarbone, wondering for the thousandth time if Harry’s named them – but now’s really not the moment to ask.

He holds Harry back by pinning him by the shoulders, mouthing briefly at his nipple and giving it a little bite to provoke another sound from Harry before drawing back again. He looks at Harry through his eyelashes, smiling sweetly before withdrawing one of his hands from Harry’s shoulder to slap the back of his fingers lightly over the moth on his stomach.

Harry winces before exhaling contentedly, and Zayn grins with delight.

He gets on his knees, battling with Harry’s belt while Harry rubs a hand up and down his reddening stomach, blue shirt dangling from his elbows. It takes some effort to yank Harry’s jeans down, as tight as they are, but finally Zayn’s got a clear pathway to his dick and he gets to it eagerly and presses his tongue over the fabric.

It’s a little porno, admittedly, which is probably why Harry gives a lopsided smile and runs a gentle hand through Zayn’s hair, watching him fondly. Zayn blinks up at him, smiling back, before he hooks his fingers over the top of Harry’s Armani boxer briefs and pulls them down, giving him a few brief strokes at the base and flicking his tongue gratuitously over the head before swallowing him down.

When they first started fucking, Zayn wanted it to be good so badly that he made stupid mistakes – a bit too much teeth, choked a little when he tried to take Harry deeper, gripped Harry’s thighs so tightly it edged on the wrong side of painful. But Harry stroked Zayn’s hair, his face, let out encouraging noises whenever Zayn did something right, and it wasn’t long before Zayn learned exactly what he liked, exactly how to ruin him.

So Zayn gets into his stride easily, his jaw loosening, his eyes fluttering shut, letting himself enjoy it. Like always, Harry smells so nice, so smooth and sweet, and his hands on Zayn’s hair, on his face, are gentle and soft without being passive or lifeless. He grabs Harry’s flapping shirt for leverage with his free hand and gets a fist full of premium cotton poplin.

Zayn gives a contented hum around Harry’s dick, sucking him down and swallowing so that Harry can feel his throat close around the head. Harry’s back arches, shirt flapping around his waist, a moan shuddering low and deep in his throat. He scratches his fingers over Zayn’s scalp, breath stopping altogether when Zayn pulls off and mouths at Harry’s balls, and then –

‘Fuck, Zayn, please,’ he whines, hips jerking forward so that his dick nearly has Zayn’s eye out, and Zayn wants to do _everything_ – he wants to blow Harry on every surface of his penthouse, wants to fuck Harry in a slippery sea of every one of his expensive shirts. He wants Harry to fuck him on the balcony so everyone on Fifth Avenue and Central Park, everyone in the whole of New York, will see. He wants Harry to own him, add him to the bric-a-brac in his living room, hang him on the wall like his Hockney.

Instead, Zayn instructs: ‘Talk.’

Slick-chinned and loose-tongued, Zayn closes his mouth around Harry’s dick again and sucks hard, cheeks hollowing, taking him as far as he can. He’s done making a show of it in the past, swirling his tongue and dragging his lips, drawing the orgasm from Harry teasingly as though presenting him with his blowjob CV, but now he just wants Harry to come so hard and fast he passes out.

‘You’re so good,’ Harry chokes, stroking at Zayn’s face blindly as his eyes squeeze shut. ‘So, so g-good. Fuck, let me…’

Zayn grabs at Harry’s waist with one hand, nails digging into one of the laurels, and pulls back to let Harry fuck him, his eyelashes moistening with every hit to the back of his throat. Harry whimpers, high and wrecked, and with quite some startling urgency, Zayn wants Harry to come all over him, brand him in it.

Harry yanks Zayn’s head back by his hair, rough for the first time, knocking Zayn’s hand out of the way and wrapping his long fingers around himself. Zayn keeps his mouth open, tongue out, ears ringing in time to the sound of Harry jerking himself off, blood pumping with the same heat that has engulfed Harry’s face, chest and neck rhubarb pink and sweating. And when Harry’s eyes roll back in his head and eyelids screw shut, coming with a startled _fuck!_ across Zayn’s mouth, over his tongue, Zayn feels like he’s won somehow because Harry’s rings are still on, just like he always imagined.

 

**to go up the empire state building**

 

Zayn used to think New York would be like the movies; everyone busy and purposeful but not overwhelmingly so, perpetual sunlight unless a light shower is needed to dramatise a particularly romantic moment, a sea of grey suited men and high heeled women embellished by the lone hipster here and the camera wielding tourist there, all set to a vaguely RnB soundtrack with a heavy beat and moderately aggressive lyrics. Instead, New York is just _dirty_ , coffee and cocaine corroded air, sweat and grimy banknotes and unwashed fingernails. The subway's dirty, the street's dirty, the people are dirty – usually in morals rather than appearance – and for the first time in his life, Zayn feels strangely pure, the white swirl of cream in a cup of tea just before it blooms like an atomic bomb and dilutes the black to brown.

Zayn gets the subway downtown and then walks back across the bridge in the afternoon sun with the taste of Harry still lingering on his tongue. He’s thinking about loads of different things – what he’s going to do with his hair tonight, if he’s up to date with his bills, when the last time he spoke to his mum was – but as he stops to light a cigarette, he turns back and gets a glimpse of the Empire State Building in the distance between other burly, melancholy buildings, and he thinks of Harry, because Harry’s never been up it.

Thinking of Harry isn’t unusual for Zayn. He has Harry memorised, every inch of his smile, every curve of his body from his shoulder and over his ribs down to his hip, every strange, sweet inclination of his mind.

He might not have Harry in public, but he has more than all these people could even wish for in private. He has Harry sweating and pleading and writhing in bed, on the floor, in the shower, against the wall. He has Harry, soft and sleepy, in the sheets next to him, whispering stories that Zayn treasures up bit by bit and locks in the very corners of his mind, his skin, his heart. He has things that unlock a new pocket of his life, _Harry-and-Zayn_ things, the shared afternoons shopping or eating, spending Harry’s money hundreds at a time. He has mornings, lunches, evenings, nights of being fucked by Harry on every hard shiny surface of his penthouse, mapping the lines of each other with their mouths. He has hours and hours of talking, of telling Harry about Louis and Eleanor and his sisters and his parents and his grandparents, of his dreamed-up future, travelling the world, making something of himself, exceeding everyone’s expectations and living up to his own.

He’s given up a lot to be with Harry, given up parts of himself, given up time he used to spend with Louis sitting at the bar in his restaurant or playing Xbox or smoking on the fire escape, time he used to spend on his illustrations, because of Harry. He can feel Louis slipping away from him, frowning every time Zayn leaves in another expensive suit and spends three nights at Harry’s without any kind of shame, but there’s nothing he can do about it now.

Because he _loves_ Harry. He loves that Harry warms himself up by pressing his cold feet and nose and fingers to Zayn's skin when he's asleep, he loves that Harry sits in Zayn's lap and traces every inch of him gently, suddenly not as sure of himself. It’s this Harry – not the Harry everyone else sees – that Zayn really wants, more than anything in the world.

That’s the Harry he chases when he's not there, when he disappears for a few days. Zayn presses his face into his pillow and tries to remember how just Harry's presence changes a room, how the light seems different and the air seems tighter. Zayn's never had the best memory, but holding onto that brings with it the promise of Harry's return, and Zayn finds himself suddenly remembering everything.

Zayn feels alarmingly protective of this fact – that he has Harry, that they are each other's – as though someone might come and snatch it from him the moment he's distracted by something else. He clings to it like a limpet, reminding himself of it whenever Harry steps away from him in public with a bright smile that makes Zayn feel unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

Zayn remembers everything.

And Zayn remembers that Harry’s never set foot in the Empire State Building, and he remembers that Harry promised Zayn a long time ago, back when they barely knew each other, that he’d go up it, because Zayn said he wasn’t allowed to live in New York if he hadn’t.

Zayn doesn’t doubt that he will, and he smiles into his cigarette, closing his eyes against the sun and carrying on back home.

 

+++

 

Just three weeks ago, Harry made Zayn ask Nick for a few extra days off work – the good thing about being an intern for a man like Nick is that he actually _encourages_ Zayn to take holiday time off – and drove Zayn to his house in the Hamptons.

Zayn had only ever seen the Hamptons on TV, read about it here and there in a few books, so he wasn’t sure what to expect as Harry drove them there in his open top Cadillac, sunglasses on and hair blowing in the wind like some fifties pin-up.

Harry drives with the confidence usually reserved for good drivers, which is unfortunate as he is a truly terrible driver. He frequently drifts onto the left hand side of the road, points out low-flying birds and faces in the clouds with alarming enthusiasm, and drives at a frankly appalling speed, much too fast for both the old engine and Zayn’s sanity. Zayn spent the whole journey gripping the leather seat with both hands, trying not to throw up.

Nonetheless, they arrived unscathed at Harry’s house in the Hamptons, a colossal white panelled house on seemingly endless grounds. There was space for about twenty cars in the driveway alone. Zayn stared.

‘Got eight bedrooms,’ Harry said with the air of an estate agent as he retrieved the key from under a flowerpot. ‘Tennis court – not that you like tennis, but you know – beach view, indoor and outdoor swimming pool.’

Zayn felt vaguely sick. ‘This is – wow. I… fucking hell.’

‘Don’t come here very often,’ Harry went on, shoving the door open and pulling their bags inside. ‘Nice to get away though, sometimes, isn’t it?’ He turned and smiled at Zayn, wrapping his arms around his waist and pulling Zayn closer, kissing him on the nose.

‘Which room is mine then?’ Zayn joked, just to try and not feel so small. ‘Do I get a double bed?’

Harry raised his eyebrows. ‘They’re all King Size.’

‘Oh, of course.’

‘You could just… you know. Share my bed.’

‘Why would I do that when you’ve got seven to spare?’

‘Well, my bed has the added bonus of me being in it,’ Harry said with a shrug. ‘And I also have a dick.’

‘True.’

‘Pros and cons.’

Zayn smiled devilishly. ‘Maybe we could, like, try out all the rooms? So I can decide which one I like best.’

‘Try them out?’

‘Yeah,’ Zayn replied. ‘Test the mattress. See which one has the best spring.’

Harry bit down on his lip. ‘Well, yeah. I mean… Mm. I could be into that.’

 

+++

 

They went for walks along the beach hand in hand, hot sand slipping between their toes, the wash of the sea at the water’s edge tickling their feet. They ate ice creams and sunbathed and read their books on the shore, and Zayn took every opportunity he could to lather suncream into the golden coast of Harry’s back, tracing swirls and vector patterns over his spine with his fingers before rubbing it in properly. Zayn curled up in the shade of a tree and watched Harry play tennis on his own, with one of those machines that spit out tennis balls like bullets, until Harry’s shirt was soaked with sweat and his hair was stuck to his forehead.

They spent lots of time in both of Harry’s pools, even though Zayn can’t swim very well. He hovered mostly in the shallow end while Harry swam in circles around him, grabbing at Zayn’s ankles under the water until Zayn kicked him off. Harry emerged from the water with long strands of hair stuck to his face, water dripping off the edge of his nose, and crowded in so close Zayn could see the freckles on his nose, the specks of gold and blue and brown in his eyes, the wet tangle of his eyelashes, the veins on his eyelids.

Every evening, neither of them attempted to even pretend there was a chance they might watch a film, or do anything other than just envelope each other. It always started on the sofa, grabbing at the other with greedy hands and going down on each other, pinning each other to the cushions and kissing, sucking, biting, licking until they were both shaking, before they progressed – tripped, stumbled – into the bedroom.

‘This is the best holiday I’ve ever had,’ Zayn told Harry on the third night, half-naked and squashed together on a sunlounger watching the sunset. Harry was curled up against Zayn’s chest as Zayn played with his hair, twisting curls around his fingers, scratching his fingertips over Harry’s scalp. ‘Well. I’ve never really been on holiday.’

‘Really?’ Harry asked, genuinely surprised, and Zayn reddened.

It’s just – Harry had travelled more than Zayn could ever dream of. He went all over Europe when he was eighteen and nineteen, learning about art ‘the right way’, which is devastatingly pretentious but Harry doesn't seem to notice or care. He spent his uni years lounging about in bars and cafés in Munich and Amsterdam and Barcelona and Verona, smoking weed with models in Paris and going to raves in old communist factories in Hungary and waking up naked on beaches in Croatia. He broke his nose when he fell off a boat in the Med, smashing his face hard against the side, and swam up laughing, blood mingling with the water around him. Sleeping and drinking and smoking his way around Europe with hair in his eyes and reckless laughter twisting up the corners of his mouth. He fucked his first boy in Vienna, got fucked by a boy for the first time in Milan. A boy in Lisbon with gold-flecked eyes and crooked teeth bought him a moped and asked to marry him, and Harry said no but took the moped anyway.

Whenever Harry recounts one of these tales, Zayn listens and listens and listens, palms slick with jealousy and awe, not losing focus once, but Zayn always kind of wants to cry. Harry’s world is so huge, so bright and sparkling, and Zayn is just a small blot of ink in the corner of an ocean, fighting to be worth something.

‘Well yeah, I've never been anywhere,’ Zayn said quietly in response to Harry’s incredulity, tugging at a strand of Harry’s hair a little harder than usual. ‘New York, Bradford, Manchester, that's it.’

Harry sat up, looking at Zayn carefully before running his thumb across Zayn's cheekbone. ‘Where'd you most like to go?’

It took a while for Zayn to respond, mostly because he was surprised by the question, but eventually he answered, ‘I don't know. Never thought about it.’

‘Really?’

Zayn nodded.

And Harry didn't ask why, didn't ask anything at all. ‘I'll take you anywhere,’ Harry said, confident and sure, thumb still on Zayn's cheekbone. He was so, so certain that it should’ve broken Zayn's heart, because it'd be pure stupidity to think that he really would, when Harry doesn’t hold Zayn’s hand around people he knows, doesn’t acknowledge that Zayn’s anything other than a friend out in public. But Harry had Zayn's dreams, all of them, in the palm of his hand, and he was offering them to Zayn like penny sweets in the playground. Zayn's never been able to resist an outstretched hand and a soft smile and a promise, and instead of breaking, his heart swelled devastatingly, throwing his pulse off balance.

Please, he wanted to say. _Show me the whole planet, so it doesn't feel like it stops and ends with you. Please._

But Harry was offering Zayn the world, and the only thing he had left was a tightly grasped scrap of dignity, his ability to not appear absolutely frantic for Harry's throwaway penny sweets that Zayn would gladly scoff until he's sick.

Zayn smiled minutely and looked away. ‘If you want,’ he said.

 

+++

 

On the last night, Zayn got out of the shower to find Harry spread out on his front on the Egyptian cotton sheets, his back long and muscled and golden. Zayn stared for a moment, dropped his towel and clambered onto the bed beside him, running his fingers down the ridges of his spine, stroking the curve of his waist, the gentle rise of his bum.

‘You all right?’ Harry asked sleepily, turning his head to blink at Zayn through a mess of hair.

Zayn nodded, then reached over to the bedside table to grab a biro, acting entirely on a whim. ‘Can I draw on you?’ he asked, the words tumbling out of his mouth without considering them first, but Harry just nodded into the pillow, his eyes falling shut again.

He started by writing his name on Harry’s arm in big bubble writing, pressing deep, but when he thought about it he worried Harry might think it was a bit creepy, so he licked his finger to rub off the ‘YN’ and changed it to a ‘ZAP!’ just like Zayn’s own. When that was done, he had the sudden desire to put all of his tattoos on Harry’s skin, and so for the best part of an hour he filled in all the spaces in Harry’s arm, and then the other arm, and then Zayn straddled Harry’s hips to draw the bird on the back of his neck.

At that point, presented with the empty, white skin of Harry’s back, Zayn couldn’t stop, and he kept pressing the pen into the blank, smooth canvas of his skin without thinking about it. He ended up drawing the New York skyline, the place where he and Harry met and his life finally _started_. Zayn knew the pen pressed too hard into the skin of Harry’s back when he drew the Empire State Building, Zayn frowning like he wanted to lace it into the layers of his skin like a tattoo, brand it there permanently.

Harry hissed, wincing and shifting under Zayn slightly, and Zayn apologised and tried to mean it.

Once the skyline was done, he made it fun, drawing huge dinosaurs stomping all over the grey, monotonous buildings, alien spaceships hovering in the clouds, a beanstalk ascending right up to the nape of Harry’s neck. He added fires and explosions, people parachuting in from hovercrafts, lightning in the sky, and amidst this terrifying apocalypse he drew Harry, a tiny figure barely bigger than the nail on his little finger, waving from inside his unscathed Fifth Avenue apartment, safe and happy.

He leaned back to survey his work, the entirety of Harry’s back covered with careful lines of black ink. He traced gently with his fingertips, following the outline of each building with the very edge of his nail, round and round, and Harry stirred beneath him.

‘Are you done?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good,’ Harry huffed, his voice muffled slightly by the pillow, ‘cos it’s making me horny as fuck.’

Zayn grinned. ‘Can I take a picture on your phone?’

Harry reached blindly for his iPhone on the bedside table and passed it to Zayn, lying there stock-still with his cheek pressed into the pillow as Zayn took a few careful pictures, his tongue caught between his teeth.

‘Thanks,’ Zayn said, kissing Harry’s shoulder blade and tasting ink on his lips. He shuffled down Harry’s legs slightly, hands stroking down his back to the now empty, white skin of his ass, and then squeezed, listening for the hitch in Harry’s breath.

The thought occurred then, and in any other mood Zayn might have talked himself out of it, might have convinced himself it was a bad idea, but as it happened Harry shifted against the mattress, rubbing himself off against the sheets, and it was like Zayn’s brain ceased to function alongside rationality, his vision blurring, his hands moving before he realised he could stop them.

He leaned down, pausing to give Harry time to turn over or shift away, but when he didn’t, Zayn gave him an experimental lick, so slowly it felt forever before Harry huffed out a gasp, his hand balling into a fist by his waist.

‘Is this okay?’ Zayn asked after, because Harry had never done this with Zayn, had never let Zayn anywhere near here. But Harry just nodded, biting down on his lip and looking at Zayn over his shoulder with heavy eyelids, hair brushing the tip of his nose like a fucking pornstar. Zayn stared at him for a minute, with the kind of wonder and heart-shattering affection he reserves especially for Harry, before lowering back down again.

Zayn’s never been exactly an expert at this, but pressing wet, messy kisses and curling his tongue seemed to work all right, because Harry whined loudly, a cry high in his throat, strangled and needy in a way that Zayn had never heard from him before. Harry spread his legs wider, biting into the skin of his own shoulder and shifting his hips down into the bed.

Zayn just gripped Harry harder, watching the fleshy skin of his bum go white beneath Zayn’s fingers as he swirled his tongue, watching as sweat gathered at the base of Harry’s back. Harry kept squirming until he was actually trembling, mewling Zayn’s name and clutching the pillow with both hands.

‘Fucking – Zayn, please fuck me,’ Harry gasped, the flimsy skin of his eyelids glistening in the dim light of the room, his hair damp and clinging to his face now. Zayn stared, his heart twisting itself inside out.

‘Are you – are you sure?’

‘Yes, yes, fuck, please,’ Harry muttered, polite to a fault as always, spit crowding at the corner of his slack, pomegranate mouth and pooling against the goose-down pillow.

Zayn scrambled over to the bedside cabinet before Harry could change his mind, clumsily grabbing for a condom and lube with shaking fingers, but when Zayn glanced back at him, Harry looked different.

‘Haven’t – I haven’t done this for a while.’

‘That’s okay,’ Zayn reassured him, pressing a kiss to the back of Harry’s neck, the top of the beanstalk, as he resettled between his legs. ‘I’ll be careful.’

‘Not for years, Zayn,’ Harry said, quieter this time, and Zayn could tell he was scared, that the tremble in his voice wasn’t from pleasure anymore. ‘I … I don’t remember what it feels like.’

Zayn just kissed his neck, his shoulders, the backs of his elbows again and again, easing him open with gentle fingers for what felt like forever until finally – _finally_ – Zayn pushed into him. His head was swimming, trying to focus on the damp hair at the back of Harry’s neck, the sweat gathering on his temple, but it was so tight and so hot, and Harry’s skin was scorching under his, and there was no way he could concentrate, not at all. It took every ounce of self-control not to fuck him until they were both screaming, and Zayn had an unreasonable desire to bruise him, to leave finger marks on his hips and teeth marks on his shoulder blades, to have Harry aching and thinking about him the next time he disappeared for four days without a word.

Still, he went slowly, soothing Harry gently and trying not to take it to heart that Harry was obviously not enjoying it, his face screwed up and his eyes wet, mouth falling open in gasps that weren’t the kind Zayn could even pretend were pleasured.

‘I’m so sorry, Harry,’ Zayn said, stilling, when Harry let out something that sounded an awful lot like a sob and pressed his face into the pillow, clutching the sheets so hard his knuckles had gone white.

‘It’s fine, keep going.’

‘But I –’

‘Just _move_ ,’ Harry growled and so Zayn did as he was told, and he said sorry again because he couldn’t help it once he started, fucking into him faster and harder, losing himself to it. Harry looked like a piece of art beneath him, a tangle of dark hair across white, white pillows, lips redder than Zayn’s ever seen them and skin flushed all over, both of their sweat smudging the ink across Zayn’s chest and Harry’s back.

Zayn pushed his hands up and down the helpless curves of Harry’s ribs, hard beneath the soft, pink skin, and Harry experimentally shifted his hips back against Zayn’s, moving for the first time.

 _I love you_ , Zayn nearly said, his eyes hopelessly shut, teeth ripping into his bottom lip. _I’ve fallen in love with you and I’ve never loved anyone before but I never want to love anyone else ever._

It would have been so easy to say it then, as Harry maybe started to like it, mumbling away to Zayn and moving with him, pushing back when Zayn snapped forward.

_I love you. I’ve got an awful memory, but I remember everything about you. I’ve followed you this far, pushed myself into the middle of your world so you’d look at me the way I look at you. I love you. Please love me too._

Instead, Zayn pulled out, ripped off the condom, and came with a groan all over Harry’s back, all over the smudged Empire State Building, dripping down Harry’s ribs to the $300 sheets.

 

**to meet (charm, impress, blow away) his friends**

 

Zayn and Louis’ flat is admittedly disgusting, every mess untouched as though preserving the scene of a crime that never happened. There’s still stains on the wallpaper from the last food fight he and Louis had. There’s scratches in the skirting board from when they decided skateboarding inside would be a good idea. The door to Zayn’s bedroom has a hole in it because Louis punched it in once when Zayn wouldn’t get up to go to work.

Zayn's not entirely averse to tidying but Louis is fundamentally against it, and of the other two guys that live there, one is barely in and the other rarely emerges from his bedroom. Zayn doesn't indulge in cleaning up mess that doesn't belong to him, so the flat remains a health hazard that will one day undoubtedly be sealed off and disinfected, in Zayn's head by men in orange suits shrieking ‘23-19!’ as in _Monsters Inc._

Still, Zayn feels a little relieved when he arrives home to it after spending too long in Harry’s apartment. The absence of Roman marble and bullet-proof glass and elevators is welcome, and the creak of the stained floorboards, the incessant drip of the leaky tap, the draught creeping through the thin windows, is immediately comforting, a broken, faulty, chilly hug.

‘Hey,’ Louis says when Zayn walks in, smiling tightly in a way that has Zayn tensing up immediately, because this isn’t a loud, friendly, _Louis_ kind of hey. Eleanor’s there too, curled up next to Louis on the sofa with her fingers wrapped around a glass of lemonade.

‘Hi,’ Zayn says slowly, dropping his bag on the ground by the door and shuffling closer. ‘Are you guys all right?’

Summer suits Louis, mostly because he resolutely doesn’t believe in jackets and strides out wearing a t-shirt and nothing more in any weather, rain or shine. Today, though, in the midst of summer, he’s wearing a jumper, and Zayn knows immediately that something’s wrong. Louis only ever puts on a sweater in the summer when he’s worried about something, because he has a nervous habit of scratching his tattoos over and over till he breaks the skin. Zayn gulps.

‘Where have you been?’ Louis asks, staring at Zayn with an unreadable expression.

‘At… his place,’ Zayn says, swallowing. They don’t know Harry’s name yet, even though it’s been months, because Harry told him not to tell. Zayn tries to convince himself it’s a good thing, because Louis would only do something stupid, like find out where Harry lives and invite himself over.

‘I heard he took you to the Hamptons a few weeks ago,’ Eleanor says, offering Zayn a small smile. ‘That’s nice.’

Zayn nods. ‘Yeah, yeah, it was really nice.’ He looks at his shoes, new Docs to replace the old scuffed ones he’s had since he was fifteen. ‘He has a tennis court,’ he offers, voice small.

Silence – stifling and cold – falls between them, and just as Zayn is about to shuffle to his room and get back to his book so he doesn’t have to think about why this has become so awkward, Louis clears his throat.

‘Zayn, mate, we want to talk to you.’

‘Okay.’

‘You and… this guy…’

Eleanor places a hand on Louis’ knee, halting him. ‘Are you … happy with him?’ she asks.

Zayn blinks at them for a moment, confused. ‘Well… yeah, obviously.’

‘You’re happy that he buys you all this stuff?’

Unease crawls up the delicate curve of Zayn’s spine, rests at the back of his neck, glistening there in a thin sheen of nervous perspiration. ‘I… what?’

‘Why do you let him buy you all this shit?’ Louis asks bluntly, his voice flat. ‘All the clothes, the shoes, the fucking _watch_. How many suits do you have now, Zayn? Six? Seven? All of them cost more than everything I own combined, probably!’

Zayn laces his hands together behind his back, trying to stay calm and not panic. ‘Well, I… so? Why does it matter?’

Louis stands up, facing him like they’re in a showdown, hands buried deep in his pockets. ‘Zayn, tell me the truth. Are you using him?’

‘Wait… _what_?’

Zayn blinks at him, hurt. Louis knows Zayn better than probably anyone else in the world. Louis and Zayn used to get drunk together every Friday night, used to bicker over whose turn it was to do the washing and end up making a fort of the dirty sheets instead. Zayn used to go and sit in Louis’ restaurant most evenings, help peel carrots or just sit on the side and work his way through a few beers, keeping Louis sane in the busier shifts. They used to plan matching tattoos and trips to England so Louis could meet Zayn’s family. Zayn helped Louis pick out an engagement ring for Eleanor – not that he’s bought it yet, because he didn’t have quite enough for it at the time. Has he bought it by now, though? Zayn’s not actually sure.

‘I just – we can’t get our heads round it,’ says Louis. ‘Why haven’t we met him? Why don’t we know his fucking _name_ , for God’s sake?’

Zayn runs a hand through his hair, the blood draining from his face like dirty water from a plughole until he feels a bit faint. ‘Lou…’

‘I didn’t think you liked this whole –’ Louis flaps his arms about ‘– life with Nick the Polar Bear and the arty wankers and going to those stupid events –’

‘I don’t!’

‘– and it’s fine if you do, but … we’re your best friends, yeah? Why have you shut us out?’ Louis grinds his teeth. ‘Are you like, ashamed of this, now? Friends you met on Craigslist aren’t as good as friends you meet over caviar, yeah?’

‘No, I’m not!’ Zayn insists, licking his lips and looking frantically between Louis and Eleanor, annoyed and concerned in equal measure. ‘And I don’t like all that shit, and I’m – I’m not fucking _using_ him, okay? I just… I want him to like me. He likes buying me shit, okay? I’m not gonna stop him. He’s got so much money and he wants to share it. It’s not for me, it’s for him. That’s all it is.’

Eleanor sighs, standing up too and blinking at Zayn sadly. ‘You can’t change who you are just so he’ll like you.’

‘It’s not – I’m not changing –’

‘Well, you are a bit.’

‘I’m _not_ , Louis!’ Zayn falters, mouth opening and closing hopelessly. ‘Look, a lot of people can't put up with me, because I think too much and forget about stuff that's actually happening, but – but Harry doesn't try and knock it all out of me. He builds a little wall around it, he - he puts up a fence and keeps it safe.’ He stares imploringly at Louis, and then at Eleanor. ‘And I do that for him too, I make him feel safe, I'm a home he hasn't had in ages. I know all that. I can’t lose that.’

‘We just want you to think ab–’

‘No – no,’ Zayn says, backing away from them until his heels hit the skirting board. ‘You guys don’t understand, all right? You don’t get it.’

‘Then explain to us!’ Louis tries, grabbing at Zayn’s elbow. ‘Look, I rented out the new Marvel film for us, you’ve not watched it yet, have you? Stay and talk to us, Zayn. We want to understand. Please.’

Zayn gulps, and something dies a little inside him, a small piece of his heart flaking away from the rest of it and fluttering to their feet. ‘I – I can’t. He’s got a big speech thing at the Met. I can’t miss it. I have to go and get ready.’

‘Zayn –’

‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

But he’s already walking away.

 

+++

 

Zayn doesn’t get ready straight away.

He climbs out of his window onto the fire escape and walks up, up, up until he’s on the roof, clambering over a drain and a pile of soggy leaves. He’s barefoot, and all he’s got with him is a packet of cigarettes and his lighter, the one with the cartoon snake on it he bought when he was seventeen, but that’s enough. He lies right back against the asphalt roof, head resting on the arm tucked behind his head, and stares at the clouds, trying to find shapes.

His brain’s not working properly today. He can’t see shapes in anything.

Louis and Eleanor are his only friends here, it’s true. He didn’t really have many friends at home, anyway, just Liam from school who used to go on bike rides with Zayn through Bowling Park and buy him comics for his birthday. Now Liam works in a factory, has settled down with a girl Zayn’s never met and probably never will, and Zayn’s here, so far from home. He doesn’t usually feel the distance but today it feels huge, a gulf so wide home’s almost untouchable, now, a part of the past that can never be unlocked again.

Zayn considers ringing his mum and telling her about Harry, asking for her advice, but his phone’s downstairs and he doesn’t want to worry her, anyway. She worries about him; whether he’s eating enough vegetables or getting enough fresh air, whether he’s been mugged on the subway or conned by his landlord. So he tilts his head back and closes his eyes against the sun, feels the breeze tickling the back of his eyelids. His chest rises and falls with every breath, his pulse humming in time to the buzz of the cars far, far below in the distance. Sometimes he comes up here at night, stares at the stars with a cigarette dangling between his lips and just sits soaking up the busy silence, all the shouts and sirens and engines and music in the distance. The world screaming and sprinting around him, but Zayn is perfectly, peacefully still. He feels fucking _alive_ up here.

This is why he came to New York, to feel like this. To let his life _finally_ begin, to start _living_ rather than drifting around in a fantasy world and letting everything pass him by.

If Zayn’s life is like a Monopoly board, Zayn’s been hovering somewhere just past Go! for 22 years. He thought Nick bumbling into Louis' restaurant had been his Advance to Free Parking card, one of the few Chance cards that really makes your heart sing, but in reality, it’d been more of a ‘You won third prize in a dog show, collect £10’. But Harry – Harry is the last space on the board, that dark blue dangerous square in the corner, Mayfair, and Zayn’s right there. Harry makes Zayn feel like he’s living.

He’s got to cling onto that for as long as he can, even though his conversation with Louis and Eleanor has created a horrible twisting pull in his chest, his heart stretching itself thin like elastic. There’s so many things he doesn’t understand about Harry, so many questions left unanswered that he’s blissfully ignored because that’s what Zayn does. Every bad thought, every suspicion or worry or doubt he’s had, he’s flattened as quickly as it appeared. He sees the good until the bad slaps him in the face and stamps on his feet, presses itself nose to nose with Zayn and forces him to stare right back.

One day he’ll stretch his heart so far and so thin it’ll break, snap back in on itself, the sharp sting of an elastic band against your knuckles. It’s coming, rattling towards him with the inevitability and confidence of a steam-train, but he won’t untie himself from the tracks, not just yet.

He’s got to cling onto Harry for as long as he’s got.

 

+++

 

Just a few days ago, Tuesday, was the last time Zayn went out formally with Harry – a dinner this time, for a charity helping underprivileged New York kids get into art. Zayn was clad in an Armani suit and Tom Ford cologne, his hair mostly slicked back with just one strand falling delicately in front of his eyebrow, and when he and Harry walked in together, heads quite literally turned. Zayn’s chest puffed up a little at that.

Dinner was held in a vaguely municipal building on Park Avenue, the inside littered with round tables of ten draped in starch white tablecloths so that the space resembled an upmarket wedding. Zayn wasn’t exactly a fan of this décor – for his own wedding, he wants it outside on a farm or in a field or something, and everyone has to wear wellies and raincoats and pick wild flowers to put in their hair – but he was able to appreciate that it was rather nicely lit, candles and fairy-lights and lanterns draped across the ceiling.

Zayn stared at the ceiling again for a while, as is his custom, neck tilted back, smile soft and appreciative, when a hand curved around his elbow and Harry pulled him back down to earth and over to their seats.

They joined a table of eight others and Harry introduced Zayn as ‘my friend from home’, which was a lie on all accounts and seemed an obvious fib given the noticeable age gap, but Zayn tried not to overanalyse it. Harry chattered away to everyone amiably, effortlessly talkative, while Zayn made shapes out of his thick, impeccably pressed napkin, folding it into a flower and then, shaking it out and starting over, a swan.

‘Nice finger work,’ the lady next to Zayn commented, leaning into him and winking, and Zayn choked out a laugh before shuffling his chair closer to Harry’s and shaking out his napkin hurriedly, stuffing it in his lap.

Zayn wasn’t entirely sure what to do with his hands then – they seemed a bit foreign all of a sudden, like they’d miraculously just sprouted from the ends of his arms, or he’d regenerated like a lizard and had forgotten how to work them. He placed them flat on the table, then folded in his lap, then fiddled with the rather unaccountable ornate clock in the centre of the table, turning the arms to midnight and snatching his fingers away like they’d been burned when it chimed, alarmingly loud. He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest for safekeeping but they still felt awkward, so he took to squeezing Harry’s knee under the table instead, sliding his hand up Harry’s thigh. He peered at Harry curiously, watching Harry’s jaw clench as Zayn gave him an experimental squeeze, and when Zayn tried a purposeful rub, Harry’s nostrils flared.

‘Later,’ Harry hissed, shoving Zayn’s hand out of his lap, and Zayn sighed and looked up at the ceiling again.

 _He doesn’t fit in_. It’s so obvious, still, even after months of following Harry around like a little puppy, letting Harry dress him up like a doll in expensive clothes and sending him for haircuts and facials and massages. It didn’t take long for Zayn to become inured to it all, to learn to swallow his boredom or distaste, because the parties, the people, the expensive clothes and shoes and cars, are Harry's life and Zayn wants to be in it. So over and over again, he pretended not to feel like a philistine as Harry wheeled him out to operas and fashion parties and film screenings and cocktail nights, doing his best to network like thousands of people would kill to do and trying hard not to be ungrateful.

He can be primped all he likes, but he’ll never know what to do with his hands when there’s no book or pen or skin around to occupy him; he’ll never know how to make small talk or pretend to be interested in these people’s latest holiday or relationship or tabloid scandal. This fact settled uncomfortably at the pit of Zayn’s stomach, making his brow sweat.

The arrival of more drinks proved a welcome advance in proceedings, and Zayn delighted in the fact that what looked like a Bloody Mary was placed ceremoniously in front of him with unneeded bravado. He picked it up, sniffed it, then put it back down again.

‘What’s this?’ Zayn asked Harry, lip curling.

‘Gazpacho.’

Zayn raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s that?’

‘Cold tomato soup.’

Zayn lifted it to his lips with a look of disdain as Harry watched on with amusement. He took a small sip; an unwelcome onion slithering over his tongue before all manner of lumpy, cold vegetables made their greasy voyage into his mouth, and Zayn swallowed it all with grace before setting down his glass.

‘Tastes like blended kidney,’ he announced, washing it down with an only slightly more preferable gulp of red wine.

Harry smirked. ‘Mmmm,’ he hummed, leaning in and biting his lip sensually, an exaggerated fluttering of eyelashes. ‘God, anatomical. I love it.’

‘At least I swallowed it,’ Zayn said with a shrug, biting back a smile of his own and resisting the urge to grab Harry and shove his tongue down his throat. ‘I wanted to spit it all over the table.’

Harry patted Zayn’s knee, looking away pointedly. ‘Love a good swallower.’

Zayn’s mouth went very dry, like he’d just eaten a packet of crackers, but Harry was already talking to one of the models, an esoteric debate about people Zayn has probably met but couldn’t remember, and Zayn resigned to looking around the room.

Zayn recognised faces from other events, people known in the papers as the ‘arty set’, or by Louis as ‘ _fucking wankers_ ’. For a moment, Zayn sat there feeling sorry for them, all the playwrights and poets and artists and actors and drug addicts and sex addicts and fame addicts, until he remembered that for all intents and purposes, sitting there next to Harry in an Armani suit, he’s one of them. He downed some more wine, wishing Louis were there.

The starter was next, an artistic plate of smoked salmon, sliced red pepper, various sauces and creams all framed by thin slithers of flaccid white artichoke. Zayn blinked at it, vaguely disgusted, before hacking away at the salmon with his knife and stuffing a bit of it behind his teeth.

‘You okay?’ Harry asked pleasantly, nudging Zayn with his elbow.

Zayn swallowed harshly, ignoring the feeling of the slime crawling down his throat. ‘Mmm. Lovely.’ He paused, expecting Harry to turn away but he didn’t, just smiled softly at Zayn and tilted his head to the side, waiting. ‘Uh… Harry?’

‘Yes, Zayn?’

‘Are you ever going to meet my friends?’

He’d thought about this a lot recently; Harry had never expressed any interest in meeting them whatsoever, however much Zayn talked about them. It unsettled him, and even when asking Harry, there was caution behind it. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if Harry said no. He didn’t want to think about what he’d do.

Harry didn’t even hesitate. ‘Of course! Meet, charm, impress, blow away.’ He beamed, pressing his knee against Zayn’s beneath the tablecloth. ‘Promise.’

‘Okay.’

‘How are you finding the food?’

‘Everything's very wet.’

‘The bread's not wet,’ Harry said, slightly defensive, before leaning in to show where his allegiance truly lies, saying under his breath, ‘Hard as fuck, though. Could knock someone out.’

Zayn grinned. ‘Shall we test it?

‘Dangerous. Like dropping a penny from the Eiffel Tower.’ Harry mirrored Zayn’s smile, licking his lips and lacing his fingers through Zayn’s under the table. ‘I've always wanted to try that, see if it'd really kill someone.

‘You murderous bastard. ‘

‘Imagine that. Banged up in prison with all the serial killers and rapists and that, and when they ask you to explain you have to tell them morbid curiosity drove you to drop a coin from atop a towering monument. That's a Greek fucking tragedy.’

For the entirety of the evening after that, Zayn had just imagined a little cartoon Harry in jail, rounding up the other prisoners for a bit of afternoon yoga, scouting out the smuggling inmates like Morgan Freeman in _The Shawshank Redemption_ to rustle in some fruit and veg for him to eat in secret, scratching Zayn’s name into the prison wall.

When they finally wended their way home – or back to Harry’s, not _home_ – they kissed heatedly in the lift up to Harry's penthouse and then on the stairs for a while, too, before Harry dragged him upstairs. And then they were in bed – Harry’s bed, not _their_ bed – mostly naked, and Harry's hand was pumping between Zayn's legs at a steady but not entirely unhurried pace, when Zayn pulled away from his wet, hot mouth and said, ‘Harry?’

Harry grinned slow, coral pink lips easing back across white, perfect teeth. ‘Yes, Zayn?’

‘Do you –’ Zayn cleared his throat, buying himself time, ‘– do you own a striped top?’

Harry's hand paused around Zayn's dick. ‘Yes.’

‘Could you, like... Put it on?’

There was a moment of stillness. ‘In like a sexy way or...?’

‘Not really. More in a – a prisoner kind of way.’

It is a testament to both Zayn and Harry as individuals, and their relationship generally, that Harry neither questioned nor alarmed at this. Instead, he pressed a single kiss to Zayn's mouth and leaped out of bed, pottering off to his closet completely naked. Zayn waited patiently, propping himself up on his elbows and waiting for the little wild-haired cartoon Harry in his head to materalise in real life, and when Harry emerged a few moments later clad only in a Breton top that exposed more collarbone and stomach than is the custom for menswear, Zayn blinked in paralysing surprise, stunned, before howling with laughter.

‘Is this prisoner-y?’ Harry asked, looking down at himself doubtfully while Zayn collapsed back into the bed, practically roaring now. ‘Or is it more French?’

That only made Zayn laugh harder, hands pressing against his ribs as his toes curled, his stomach aching with it.

‘Is this foreplay for today's youth?’ Harry asked, approaching the bed with a smile of his own. He crawled up the bed, mock-coquettish. ‘Costume charades. Does this sheer shirt say new age runway or high-class prostitute?’

Zayn choked. ‘Harry –’

‘Is this leather jacket mid-90s Kate Moss and Johnny Depp, or look-what-Dad-found-at-the-market-doesn't-he-look-trendy?’

Harry was hovering over Zayn on all fours at this point, grinning down at him and watching Zayn curl into himself, shoulders shaking with breathless laughter.

‘What's the verdict, Zaynie?’ He leaned in, hair tickling Zayn's face as he said in a sultry approximation of a French accent, ‘'As zis turned you on? 'Ave we found ourselves a win-uh?’

Zayn just squirmed and tried to bat Harry away, eyes dampening and breath wheezing, and Harry watched with obvious delight, his mouth hanging open and curved up at the corners.

When Zayn recovered enough to breathe he fisted the neck of Harry's Breton and pulled him closer, slotting his lips over Harry’s and kissing him until Harry’s breath was lost too, vanishing somewhere in between hot tongues and lips and teeth and a small moan that pushed its way up the back of Harry’s throat.

With the closest sound Zayn's ever made to a giggle in his life, he pulled back and stared at Harry, the words _I love you_ sitting on the tip of his tongue, begging to expel themselves all over Harry. But they got glued to the top of his mouth, somehow, and instead he said, ‘Don't ever attempt a French accent again’ before kissing and kissing and kissing Harry and then fucking him into the mattress so hard Harry forgot how to speak entirely.

 

**to throw away Alex’s vinyl**

 

Zayn lies on the roof until the sky melts into swirls of ochre and indigo and his feet go numb, and by the time he heads back to his bedroom he only has an hour to get ready.

He showers in a rush, lamenting the shitty water pressure as he always does, now, after experiencing the wrath of Harry’s almost violent power shower. He nearly hacks chunks of his face off when hurriedly shaving, and after he trips out of the bathroom with toothpaste around his mouth, he shoves the Balmain suit on without much grace, yanking the tie around his neck like he’s tightening a noose.

His hair is always a problem – does he quiff it up? Flatten it down? Try something different, like he did at the charity dinner, with the one strand thing? Harry likes it down, but Eleanor says he looks more expensive with it up so he slaps some gel into his palms and frantically arranges it into something up away from his face. There’s just time to toe on his shoes and splash on some Tom Ford, and then finally secure the watch carefully around his wrist, stroking it gently, before the buzzer shrieks and the words ‘ _Your car, Mr Malik_ ’ drift through the flat.

Zayn emerges from his room, straightening his tie and glancing nervously at Louis, whose finger is still hovering over the intercom in a judgemental sort of way.

‘Mr Malik’s just coming,’ he says flatly, giving Zayn a tight-lipped smile and nodding. ‘You look good, Zayn.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Me and El will be here later in case you … I don’t know. If you change your mind.’

He looks so sad and disappointed that Zayn has to force himself to swallow the strange concoction of guilt and embarrassment that lodges itself up in his throat, and instead nods curtly, opening the door to the graffitied, piss-soaked stairway.

‘See you tomorrow, Lou.’

‘Yeah. See ya.’

 

+++

 

The car drops him off at the Met and Zayn steps out feeling like a fucking film-star.

Cameras go off in his face like little explosions, even though he’s only appeared in the gossip rags and the sidebar of shame a handful of times, next to Nick or somewhere behind Harry, captioned as a ‘hot new emerging artist’ which is a hideously generous exaggeration but quietly flattering all the same.

Once the smug prick with the weird teeth splashed pictures of Zayn at a fashion show across his website, captioning it ‘ _OMG!!! Who IS Grimshaw’s hot new arm candy?_ ’. Zayn only knows this happened because Nick showed him one afternoon, howling with laughter before promptly printing it out and tacking it to the wall of his studio.

Zayn spots someone who looks an awful lot like Kanye West in the pulsing distance at the end of a long red carpet, but despite this some people are still taking photographs of him, screaming ‘Look over here!’ and ‘Smile!’, and Zayn hears one guy shout ‘Malik, Malik!’ before he ducks his head and walks as fast as he can along the carpet, his hands buried in his pockets and balled into little fists.

Inside, Zayn doesn’t even stop to admire the ceiling; he beelines straight to a waitress to grab some alcohol, pouring a whole glass of wine down his throat and trying his best not to gag in her face, setting it back empty on the tray with trembling fingers.

‘Steady on, Zayn!’ a voice bellows, and then Nick’s there in a suit of radioactive orange, squeezing Zayn’s shoulder and knocking their hips together. ‘Party’s not even started yet! And you’ve got work in the morning!’

‘Have you seen Harry?’ Zayn asks weakly. He already wants to go home, but his sole motivation to stay is somewhere in the crowd shrouded in a Burberry suit, laughing at a joke Zayn knows he isn't really finding funny because Harry's humour starts and ends with the depth and maturity of Christmas cracker gags. His heart aches for him.

Zayn fiddles with his watch, reminds himself that Harry’s nervous about his speech, that he needs Zayn here to support him, to grin up at him when he’s blathering about the new face on the art scene this year, the legacy of the greats, the brilliance of the Met. Except, he can’t support Harry in public in the way that he wants to, can’t squeeze his hand or kiss him or tuck his hair behind his ears. Not when people can see. That’s always been the unspoken foundation of everything.

 _Why, though?_ Zayn assumed at first it was because he wasn’t good enough; a lowly intern slumming it in Brooklyn, his entire wardrobe consisting only of a few battered H &M shirts and a pair of jeans he’s had since he was seventeen. But he’s tried so hard, done everything Harry asked, worn everything Harry bought for him, and nothing’s changing.

Nick’s babbling away at full pelt without much concern as to whether or not Zayn’s listening, and Zayn nods idly as he twists the watch around his wrist. A present from Harry, given to him when they left the Hamptons. Harry’s bought him loads of stuff in the past; thousands of dollars worth of clothes, shoes, cologne, nicer bedclothes for Zayn’s room in Brooklyn, haircuts and facials and underwear, food and drink at nice restaurants. None of it came in a box, though. None of it was given to Zayn like a _gift_. Harry may have picked out all of Zayn’s clothes for him before, but he never gave them to Zayn with nervous excitement, watching him unbox them with wide, hopeful eyes and clammy hands.

Zayn’s not a caveman, and he knows immediately that it’s a Rolex, that it costs more than Zayn’s entire life. He showed it to Louis when he got home and he’d practically had a heart attack, snapping pictures at it from every angle and sending them to everyone he knows. And Zayn’s never been particularly fond of Harry buying him things, but that watch… it meant something. Just like they mean something.

He stares at Nick with faraway eyes, running through everything Harry’s said to him in the last twenty-four hours and trying to dislodge the sense of unease that’s been following him around all day. Harry had been fine with him last night; they fucked on the kitchen counter when Zayn arrived, and then sat cross-legged on the floor going through Harry’s old record collection until Tchaikovsky’s _Swan Lake_ found itself in Zayn’s hands. 

Zayn frowned at it, wondering how it smuggled itself in here, a decaying outsider amongst all these mournful records from long-haired, sad-eyed men of his parents’ generation. He had a strange urge to fling it out the window, but then Harry practically clawed it out of his hands, hugging the thing to his chest as his cheeks reddened. Zayn just sat there staring at him, confused, but Harry didn’t offer up any explanation, just held the record close as though cradling a child, not meeting Zayn’s eye.

‘Didn’t have you down for a ballet man,’ Zayn had said slowly, trying to make Harry laugh, but Harry just sniffed and picked at the frayed edge of the cover.

‘It’s not mine.’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s … it belonged to someone. A long time ago.’

‘Yeah.’ Zayn paused, surveying Harry carefully before rubbing his knuckles over Harry’s knee. ‘There’s no point trying to glue yourself to people who broke you, you know.’

Harry looked up at Zayn through a sweep of dark eyelashes, mouth twisting into something sad and perplexed all at once. ‘Yeah, I know.’

‘You’ll get rid of that, yeah, Harry? Forget about them?’

‘Yeah,’ Harry promised, but he carefully put it back of the bottom of the pile instead.

A suspicion, one that’s sat coldly in the murky corners of Zayn’s brain for a while now, slithers to the fore. _What if Harry’s with them, too? Been fucking them while he’s been fucking me? What if Harry’s still in love with them?_

Zayn’s just about to interrupt Nick and ask whether that person’s been here in disguise all along and Zayn’s never known, when a woman sweeps over to them, arms wide and dramatic.

Zayn’s first thought is that she’s just _very_ pale – white blonde hair, porcelain skin, icy blue eyes – and then that she’s tiny, about 5’2”, and soft under her dress in a comforting sort of way, wide hips and thick thighs, a swell of cleavage that Zayn might have admired if he were inclined toward that sort of thing.

‘Hello, Nick, darling!’ she says loudly, leaning up on her tiptoes to kiss Nick’s cheek, and Zayn notes that her accent is quite forcefully American, something noisy and unforgiving about it. She beams at Zayn, waving a little, and the last thing that Zayn notices is that she has wrinkles by her eyes from smiling that don’t go away when she stops, that there’s a quality to her skin that marks her as a little over thirty, a flimsiness to her. And then –

‘Have you seen Harry anywhere?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer, just squeezes Zayn’s elbow in a strangely kind gesture and adds, ‘You know, obnoxiously long hair? Pants that leave nothing to the imagination? Probably smacking his gum so loud they can hear it in New Jersey?’

Zayn grins, because that’s really such a great way to describe Harry; he might have said something similar, if he were as witty and sure of himself as this woman. Zayn likes her.

‘I wish I knew, Connie, but we’re waiting for the man of the hour ourselves,’ Nick says, sipping on his wine and looking over his shoulder, as though Harry might teleport to the spot.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, that man,’ Connie says, frowning and trying to crane her neck over the crowd, holding onto Zayn’s elbow for leverage.

‘You all right over there, Connie?’ someone from a neighbouring crowd bellows, flashing her a set of luminescent veneers.

Connie flaps a hand. ‘Just looking for my husband, he’s always disappearing.’

_My husband._

_My husband._

_My husband._

 

**to tell the truth**

 

At first Zayn’s convinced it’s a joke.

Nick’s always making stupid jokes like this that Zayn doesn’t understand, and Harry does too sometimes.

_Honestly, it was so tragic, I was fucking crying._

_You were crying?_

_No, no, not actually crying…_

So for a moment he just stands there, letting Connie cling onto his arm as she looks around the room for Harry, but then nobody’s laughing or joining in, and when Zayn looks at Nick, he doesn’t seem surprised at all. Zayn’s waiting for someone to jump out with a party popper and shout _surprise!_ , for Harry to come over and wrap his arms around Zayn’s neck and reveal Ashton Kutcher and the Punk’d cameras, whisper in Zayn’s ear that it’s all been a wind up.

But it doesn’t come. And when Zayn looks, there’s a ring on her finger.

_Her husband._

_His wife._

Zayn shakes Connie off like she’s searing him through his Balmain suit, backing away from her and nearly smacking into a waiter and upending a tray of champagne behind him.

‘You all right, Zayn?’ Nick asks, eyebrows puckering, and Zayn laughs the kind of laugh that denotes madness, running both hands through his hair.

‘Brill!’ he squawks, his hands flapping at his sides. ‘I’m fab, just – just fab. Hey, can I borrow your phone?’

Nick nods a little absently, fishing it out of his pocket and handing it over, and Zayn grabs it from his outstretched hand before turning on the spot and wriggling his way through the crowd, not giving Connie a second glance. It’s so hot in here, is the thing, bright harsh lights and too many bodies and warm breath expelled every time somebody laughs sycophantically, and it’s making Zayn dizzy. He’s suddenly so hot he’s sweating in his Balmain but he seems to be moving at a glacial pace, and by the time he’s battled his way out to a corridor of sorts his hands are shaking.

He types _Harry Styles_ into Google with difficulty, fingers trembling against the screen, but eventually it loads. And there she is, Cornelia Carlisle, blonde and short and curvy and Harry’s wife of four years, apparently. Zayn’s opposite in every single respect. He presses the back of his palm over his mouth, certain he’s about to throw up in the middle of the Met, his stomach churning dangerously with every lie Harry’s ever told, crawling like acid up, up, up.

‘Hey!’ a voice says, and Zayn turns slowly, bottom lip wobbling, to face Harry. He stands there in his nice Burberry suit, hair tucked behind his ear, unassuming and so, _so_ happy to see him, that Zayn nearly bursts into tears. ‘I saw you rushing out, are you okay?’

‘Connie’s here,’ is all Zayn manages, blinking fast so he won’t cry. Harry stares back, his expression slowly melting into something carefully blank, jaw setting.

‘Oh, yeah, she is,’ Harry says, strangely detached and calm, and that’s the part that _hurts_ , hits Zayn straight in the stomach. He doesn’t even seem surprised; he doesn’t even seem to _care._

Zayn swallows hard, looks around frantically. ‘You… have a wife?’ 

‘Well, yeah,’ Harry says flatly, but there’s a challenging edge to his voice, as though _Zayn’s_ done something wrong.

‘Oh my god,’ Zayn mumbles, pressing his hands to his face. ‘Oh my _god.’_

‘Zayn…’ Harry says slowly, stepping towards him, arms outstretched like he’s talking Zayn off a ledge. ‘Don’t overreact. You knew she was going to be here.’

‘What do you mean?’ Zayn replies hysterically, stumbling back away from Harry so that his heels scrape against the wall. ‘I didn’t even know she _existed_!’

Harry freezes, arms still reaching towards Zayn comically, and after an excruciating moment of stillness he frowns, licking his lips. ‘What do you _mean_ you didn’t know?’

‘I – I didn’t know about her until five minutes ago!’

Harry’s arms flop to his sides and his eyes narrow, his voice dipping into something dangerously dry. ‘Oh, yeah _right_ , Zayn.’

‘You… _what_?’

‘Nick says he talked to you about Connie last week. He thinks you have a _crush_ on me, that’s what he said.’ Harry half smiles at that, but it’s not a nice smile. It seems broken, misshapen, and Zayn’s heart seizes. ‘He reminded you Connie would be here this evening, _warned you_ , he told me. Don’t – don’t lie. Tell the truth. It’s okay.’

Zayn actually laughs, another lunatic laugh that sounds nothing like him, clawing at his hair and tilting his head back against the wall as his eyes slip shut. ‘Are you – how was I meant to know Connie was your _wife_? I thought it was some other random fucking person!’

‘Because it’s on the first page of fucking Google,’ Harry snaps, and he sounds so mad at Zayn that it makes it worse, makes it harder for Zayn to breathe. ‘God, Zayn, don’t tell me you’ve never Googled me.’

‘Well, I just have,’ Zayn cuts back, but his voice is trembling and he sounds more hurt than anything else. ‘I wouldn’t before. I wouldn’t. I didn’t.’

Harry pauses, pressing his lips together as his eyes scan over Zayn’s face, his own draining of colour more and more as the seconds pass. ‘You… really didn’t know?’ he asks quietly.

‘Of course I didn’t know!’ Zayn gulps, eyes swimming as he looks down the empty corridor and away from Harry’s alarmed face. ‘I’d never… never fuck up someone else’s life just for –’ He trails off, trying to remember what there is between him and Harry, what has bound them together so tightly for half the year. Zayn had thought it was love, been convinced of it so much his heart felt like it was _blooming_ , like it had reached its full capacity for the first time in his life, swelling up proudly like the colossal roll of a wave before it hits the shore. And now – now he can’t be sure anymore, can’t be sure if he even knows Harry at all. He looks at Harry sharply with wide, wet eyes, and finds him staring back, confused and anxious and scared, and even now, after all of this, Zayn wants to hug him to his chest and wipe that look off his face. ‘For what, Harry? Sex? A Rolex?’

Harry’s falters. ‘Well, I don’t know, I thought it was more than –’

‘No!’ Zayn yells, his voice much too loud in this empty corridor, slicing over Harry’s forcefully. ‘It’s not more than that, because – usually in actual relationships, where people actually care about each other, they don’t rely on fucking _Google_ to impart pretty fucking _crucial_ details, Harry!’

Zayn's never shouted at Harry before. Zayn's never shouted at a lot of people before. He is the poster child for docility, could write the guidebook on how to navigate as a non-confrontational being through a stickily hostile, argumentative world. He's fucking fuming now, though, so angry he wants to hit something like some hyper-masculine, untamed cretin, and the sight of Harry blinking at him, wide-eyed and nervous, makes it worse. He wants to fling himself into the wall, or smack Harry in the face, whichever would have the biggest impact.

‘Zayn, listen –’

‘I can’t _believe_ you!’ His voice breaks, and he wipes roughly at his face with the back of his hand, but he can’t stop now. ‘I don’t even own a fucking smartphone, did you really think I was ever going to Google you?’ He sniffs, his heart breaking with the question he never wanted to ask, ‘Do you even know me at all? Do you care?’

Harry blinks, horrified, and Zayn knows that hurt him but he doesn’t care. ‘How can you even ask me that?’ Harry says, barely louder than a mumble, and when Zayn shrugs and looks away from him, Harry takes a wounded step back. Guilt immediately curls up somewhere inside Zayn’s ribcage, and he considers reaching for Harry, catching his fingers and clinging onto him, tying them together and begging Harry to stay with him, to leave his wife and be with Zayn.

But he doesn’t, because this isn’t a cheap soap opera, and Zayn actually has some self-respect. So he just glares at Harry, watching as Harry’s hurt spirals visibly into anger.

Harry has always indulged in Zayn, in his weirdness, his quietness. He smiles when Zayn makes shapes out of his $60 pasta. He listens to Zayn’s ideas patiently, sweetly. Zayn might not own a smartphone or know his Armani from his Prada or understand how stocks and shares work, but he will always get milk in if Harry wants him to, and can stitch up holes in Harry's socks and erect flat pack furniture with adequate proficiency and cook a lamb karahi from scratch. Zayn's safe, safer than an air raid shelter, safer than a port after being lost at sea, as reliable as the tide. There's something warm and sticky sweet about that, giving something to Harry that doesn't cost money, something you can't display on a shelf. Zayn might not have money, but he has safe, reliable, trustworthy love, and it's the only thing he has to give but he gave it willingly, arms outstretched, pockets turned inside out, shoving it at Harry till there's nothing left.

And now – now there’s nothing left. There’s nothing left to give.

‘You’re a liar, Harry,’ he says, voice low, and Harry’s mouth twists in an ugly kind of way. ‘You swan around in your nice clothes with your nice smile and your – your _niceness_ , but you’re a fucking liar.’

‘I didn’t lie,’ Harry mutters, running a shaking hand through his hair.

Zayn’s lip curls up into a snarl of distaste. ‘People like you think you can have everything at once –’

‘What the fuck do you mean, _people like me_?’

‘– but that’s not how it works. I think I deserve a say of whether or not to share you –’

‘ _Share me_?’ Harry repeats, his voice high and shrill. ‘Is that what this is about? _Sharing me_? You want everything to yourself, yeah?’

Zayn opens his mouth to speak but then pauses, confused. ‘Well, I –’

‘That’s always been what it’s about, yeah, Zayn? Having _everything_. Taking everything.’

Zayn licks his lips. ‘What?’

‘Did you find my net worth on Google just now, too, Zayn?’ Harry goes on, staring right back at Zayn with hunched shoulders hunched and a set jaw. ‘Hmm? Did you? Did you like it?’

Zayn just blinks, breath stalling like he’s been punched, but Harry’s cheeks are colouring and he raises his chin proudly.

‘I’m sure it’ll make up for the horribly _inconvenient_ fact of my marriage that makes you feel a little less sanctimonious.’

Silence. Just a heavy, dead sort of silence, as Zayn struggles to breathe he tries to remember properly, tries to remember how he used to do it before Harry stamped all over his heart, flattened his ribs. ‘You fucking prick,’ is all he manages, low and broken, tears leaking out of his eyes as he holds Harry’s gaze for a single moment before turning his back on him.

Harry laughs in hysterical despair, tripping after Zayn. ‘How could you not know? I wear a _wedding ring_.’

That twists like a knife in the centre of Zayn’s chest. Harry’s touched him wearing it, has opened Zayn up and split him in half and set him on fire with the evidence of his betrayal wrapped around one of his fingers, laid out shamelessly for Zayn to see. ‘You wear a bunch of fucking rings!’ Zayn snaps, not turning around. ‘You pretentious _fuck_ , Harry, I don’t understand what you wear or what you do but I go along with it because I – I –’

Harry grabs at Zayn hard enough that he has to stop, and he claws at the lapels of his suit jacket, at Zayn’s wet face, and says breathlessly, ‘Say it, Zayn –’

‘I trusted you.’

And then he turns again, marching off down the corridor and back into the main room to find the back exit, wiping at his face with his sleeve collar. Harry just stands still, arms still hopelessly reaching for Zayn, and despite everything that’s happened, Zayn feels for him, because there’s no feeling like throwing yourself at someone and finding yourself only grasping at thin air.

 

****

  
// - //

**And now, I have re-membered you**  
**To make you real**  
**To make you see, to make you feel,**  
**To make you hear.**  
**To make you here.**

**\- Craig Raine**

// - //

 

 

 

The best and worst thing about Harry Styles is that he never gets lost.

For a while he thought that was a good thing, a desirable trait. He’s seen so much, travelled across Europe on rattling sleeper trains and on the back of strangers’ mopeds and in dusty cabs, all on his own, and he’s never felt out of place. The world swallows Harry up easily, because he’s willing, _begging_ for it, and in that way, anywhere can feel like home. You could drop Harry in an unknown city without a penny in his pocket and when you come back two days later, he’ll be washed, housed and fed, best friends with the lady who owns that old taverna on the corner, on first-name-terms with half the locals, the backstreets as familiar as the back of his hand.

He never gets lost.

But Harry’s nearing thirty now – frighteningly, almost as close to thirty as Zayn is to eighteen – and with age and experience also comes a change of perspective. Harry lies awake at night, alone, in sheets that he bought for a price that would have made him swear ten years ago, in a hollow penthouse, wondering whether the reason he’s never got lost is because he’s never looking for anything.

Zayn’s so driven, so excited by the sparkling lights of the future, bright and glaring and as _dangerous_ as Vegas, and Harry’s just… here. He’s never been good at anything, never wanted _anything_. He’s tripped and stumbled his way through life, luckily into good fortune, but the cards could have so easily been dealt to give him a bad hand.

After two years fucking about in Europe, standing in the Musée D’Orsay with some guy he’d been shagging – Pablo or Paulo, one of those – and Harry realised old Mrs Glancey downstairs at home had a Courbet on her mantelpiece, he remembers distinctly thinking, in the midst of it all, _is this it?_. He knew, then, that all the money and fame and success, everything anyone would want, had just fallen at his feet. He didn’t even have to try, not like his mum who worked two jobs alongside selling her pottery just to pay the rent, not like Gem who was smart enough to actually get into uni.

_Is this it?_

Harry doesn’t think about the future, ever, and he forces himself not to think about the past. He just wedges himself firmly in the now, smiling and drinking and chatting to strangers like this isn’t all so fucking vacuous, like he’s content to settle with this life forever.

It’s a cliché that money makes people unhappy, and the truth is, money makes Harry fucking _ecstatic_. He’s never been one to be tied down, tethered to one place or idea or group of friends, and with all this money, he’s the freest person in the world. He can buy his mum a house, eat breakfast at the best restaurant in New York, order a first class seat on the next flight out to LA just to play golf with a client, all the while looking hot as fuck wrapped up in a suit more expensive than half the seats on that goddamn plane. Money _suits_ Harry.

But love suits Harry more, and the saddest part is, love is the only thing Harry’s never managed to hold on to.

 

**to tell the truth**

 

After Zayn leaves, Harry waits in the corridor for a long time, just staring at the door like he might magically reappear. He doesn’t, though, and a little wave of panic sets in that quickly rises into a _tsunami_ sized panic, revealing itself in a sheen of sweat that crystallises Harry’s back underneath his suit.

Fingers curl around the door while Harry’s stood there paralysed, and for a moment his battered heart leaps with hope before Connie’s blonde head appears and then the rest of her follows. She looks as panicked as Harry, if that’s possible, and she steps forward with arms outstretched and face flustered.

‘Harry,’ she says, voice low and apologetic already. ‘I didn’t know that was him.’

Harry blinks for the first time in what feels like forever, his mouth opening to say words that don’t come.

‘I didn’t know it was him, Harry, I wouldn’t have – I’m so sorry. Is he mad?’

Harry barks out a laugh, his eyelids fluttering shut to stop himself from crying. ‘Yeah. Yeah he’s mad.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Connie’s little hand curls around his elbow, and he can hear she’s on the verge of tears too. ‘Harry? Harry, all you have to do is go and tell him the truth.’

Harry nods, sniffing and letting Connie wrap her arms around his middle, hugging him so tight he feels like he’s a teenager again, climbing drunkenly into bed with his mum after stumbling home from a night out, curling himself around her so he’d not feel quite so empty.

 

+++

 

The night seems to drag on for a tragically long time, and Harry would like to be able to say that he left straight after Zayn and sprinted halfway across New York to his apartment, that he fucked up his speech in his emotional turmoil, that he broke down in tears at the microphone and had to be escorted out.

None of those things happened, because the world doesn’t work like Zayn thinks it does, through a kaleidoscope. It’s not a movie; it’s grey and bleak, and people have responsibilities and reputations. Life is perpetually the grainy black-and-white Kansas, even if you sometimes get a glimpse of a far away yellow brick road, even when there’s people like Zayn who make you think there might be an Oz out there somewhere.

Harry dips out as soon as he can without being rude and rings his driver to get Zayn’s address. It takes him an hour to get there in the back of a stiflingly hot cab, the driver of which insists on playing the Bee Gees constantly, at full blast. He pays the driver generously, and upon clambering out, he steps straight into an unseasonable puddle in the gutter and ruins his Burberry trousers.

By the time he’s buzzing up to Zayn’s apartment, it’s after midnight and all Harry wants to do is cry and then sleep, in that order, and when a voice snaps _What?_ down the intercom, he really considers going home.

But he can’t, because … Zayn.

‘Hiii, hello!’ Harry says as cheerily as he can, resting his forehead against the cool metal of the buzzer. ‘Is… uh, Zayn there, please?’

Silence follows. ‘Who is it?’ the person asks suspiciously.

Harry smiles one of his best, smoothest smiles, just in case the person can hear it through the intercom. Harry’s supposed to be smooth, a big smile, a charming flail of limbs, a careful bat of his eyelids and lick of his lips. People always call Harry _smooth_ , and he has it down to an art, a well-placed hand on someone’s back, a waft of something that just _smells_ expensive, a look that makes people feel important. Harry’s the chink of ice inside a glass of whisky, the satin curl of satisfaction, the smile you remember for days.

Not with Zayn. Zayn makes Harry feel anything _but_ smooth. He’s not sure whether he loves or hates it.

‘It’s, uh – a friend.’

‘Who are you, the fucking CIA? What’s your name?’

He coughs, buys himself time. ‘Harry.’

In the muffled background, Harry hears Zayn mutter something, and Harry jerks to stand up straight, as though Zayn’s right behind him whispering in his ear.

‘He’s telling me to let you in,’ the boy says coldly. ‘But if you – all right, Zayn! He’s coming! – listen, just don’t fuck this up, you little shit.’

And then, on that welcoming note, the buzzer sounds to let him in.

There’s no elevator and flight after flight of stairs that smell like piss and frequently remind you that _Charlie was ‘ere_ in 2009, and the lights are flickering in a way that’s giving Harry a headache. Finally, he stops outside Zayn’s door, takes a deep breath, but the moment of solitude in order to gather his thoughts is interrupted when the door flies open and a pretty girl with long brown hair and a boy with a face like a fox barge past him and down the stairs without a backwards glance.

Harry stares after them, blinking, watching their wobbling shadows disappear down the stairwell before turning and walking slowly, so, so slowly, into Zayn’s apartment.

In succession, Harry’s heart swells then freezes then feels like it’s cracking, all so quickly he has to resist the urge to clutch at his chest like an old man. Zayn’s just sat there on the sofa, his suit jacket shrugged off and the tie discarded, one leg tucked under his body in that cat-like way he does. Harry has often thought he looks like a cat, body thin and lithe, the muscles under his beautiful brown skin poised like he’s perpetually ready to spring. He stares at Harry calmly, unmoving in an unnatural sort of way, round, fawn eyes so sweet and hopeful, even now, that everything in Harry _hurts_.

‘Thanks for letting me up,’ Harry says after a prolonged silence, trying to sound casual, but his voice gives him away. He sounds desperate.

Zayn says nothing, just blinks slowly, and Harry feels panic explode like a flare somewhere near his left temple. He stops looking at Zayn before he goes into premature cardiac arrest and starts looking around instead, taking in the cramped pig-sty that is Zayn’s apartment, the Pakistani rug hanging on the wall that Zayn’s told him covers a rip in the ugly wallpaper, the piles and piles of unopened letters and flyers for Chinese restaurants, the empty bottles of assorted beer and wine that have just been _left_ , as though they’re actually meant to be gathering dust.

‘Nice place,’ Harry says feebly, and he hates how forced it sounds as soon as it’s come out of his mouth. He sneaks a glance at Zayn, whose face has hardened at that comment, his jaw clenching. This is really the part where Harry ought to start grovelling but instead he lets out a nervous laugh and says, ‘Who was that charming boy who answered the buzzer?’

‘My wife,’ Zayn responds sharply. ‘Did I forget to mention it?’

Harry takes a deep breath, hands twitching by his sides like he wants to run them through his hair, or shake Zayn, or both. ‘Don’t play games with me, Zayn,’ he says flatly.

Zayn barks out a laugh at that, rubbing a hand over his face and shaking his head incredulously. ‘Harry, mate, you’re the fucking _champion_ of playing games.’

There’s a heavy pause, in which Harry just stares at Zayn and blinks and blinks and blinks, trying to shake the feeling of shame that’s crawled like an infestation of bugs right under the surface of his skin, and then the shame boils up into anger and suddenly he’s crossing the room and has got his fingers wrapped tightly around Zayn’s arm, tugging him up, yanking him roughly off the sofa.

‘Listen,’ Harry spits, his face right up close to Zayn’s, ‘I’m not your fucking _mate._ Let me remind you who put you in everything you’re wearing.’

‘Like you’ll ever let me forget it,’ Zayn bites back. He’s _mad_ , jaw tense and begging to be bitten, hands wringing together, shoulders high and set. Harry’s never seen him like this, and it’s doing something to him, reminding him of the heavy thrum of his heart, the heat of his blood around his body. ‘But apparently that’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? The money?’

And _God_ , that hurts, hurts so much Harry has to take a step back away from him, his heart curling in on itself with white-hot regret. _What has he done?_

Zayn sniffs, raises his chin. ‘I let you in because you deserve a chance to explain why the _fuck_ you would do this to me,’ he says, voice hard and icy. ‘So start explaining, Harry. Don’t waste my time.’

Harry twists his arms around himself, like he’s five and getting shouted at by his mum, like he’s holding himself together. ‘Can we – can we get a drink and sit down –’

‘No,’ Zayn snaps. ‘Start talking now, or get out.’

Harry just stares at him, at those eyes that are usually so impossibly wide and dreamy but are narrowed and hurt now, and Harry’s torn between wanting to lick him, spread him out across his sheets and press his tongue over every inch of him and _show_ him everything he can’t say, and wanting to hug him to his chest and never let go.

‘Connie knows about you,’ is all he manages to say, and Zayn’s eyes widen in alarm.

‘What?’

‘She knows. She’s always known.’

‘You – what the _fuck_! Why?’ He claws a hand through his hair, disgusted, and Harry suddenly feels like he might throw up. ‘Why did she get to know about me and I couldn’t about her?’

‘Because you – it’s complicated.’

Zayn growls, twitching with exasperation. ‘Explain, then.’

‘We – she knows everything about me.’

‘Well, what a _lovely_ marriage you guys have!’

‘No, you don’t get it – she _wants_ me to be with you.’

Zayn takes a moment for that to sink in. ‘Well that’s truly fucked up, Harry, I’m sorry. I’m not gonna be your bit on the –’

‘It’s not a proper marriage,’ Harry says loudly, louder than he needed to. It’s strange that, in the midst of all this, it feels a relief to finally say it aloud, and once it’s out he can’t stop talking. ‘It’s not real, Zayn. We’re not – we don’t love each other, we never have. We don’t want to be together forever, or – or have kids together, or move to the suburbs and get a fucking dog, okay? It’s not what you think.’

Zayn licks his lips slowly, eyes darting around the room as he tries to make sense of it. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Connie was the first person I met here. She sold me my apartment and she – she was so nice to me. I was so fucked up, Zayn, I’d been…’ He trails off, mouth grappling at words that don’t let themselves form. ‘We were friends, both of us working so hard back then, we didn’t have time to date or anything. And then she saw how much I had to pay in taxes because I was just on a work permit VISA and I … well.’

Harry swallows, looking away, and Zayn stares at him in a way that makes Harry’s skin feel itchy. ‘You married her so you’d get citizenship?’ Zayn asks, and it’s the tone of his voice – soft, not at all judgmental – that makes tears well up in Harry’s eyes.

‘It’s a – a business deal,’ he manages to mumble, digging his nails into his palms to hold the tears at bay. ‘She’s sold property to everyone I know now – you just ask Nick, or Alexa or Aimee or anyone. She’s done so well with it, she’s expanding to LA right now. That’s why she’s never here.’

‘How long do you have to be married for?’

Harry sniffs. ‘We could break up now. I’m a US citizen in my own right now, we’ve been married long enough. We could break up now.’

Zayn tilts his head to the side, surveying Harry like he does when he’s staring at a painting he doesn’t understand yet, and Harry has to force himself not to start bawling. ‘Do you fuck?’

‘What?’

‘Do you and Connie fuck?’

‘Zayn –’

‘Tell me,’ Zayn says, and it’s not angry but it’s firm enough that Harry’s wet eyes widen, the lump in his throat beginning to hurt. ‘Tell me.’

‘Not – not recently.’

‘ _Recently_?’

‘Not since a while before I met you. It’s just mindless, Zayn, we were both single –’

‘You’re not single, Harry!’ Zayn reminds him harshly, and Harry flinches, his head bowing. ‘You’re fucking married in every way that it matters! It doesn’t make it right just because you two know it’s fake!’

Harry closes his eyes. ‘But you see why I couldn’t tell you –’

‘You could have told me.’

‘No, I couldn’t –’

‘Yes you could.’

Harry presses his fingers to his throbbing temples, eyes still squeezed shut, but he feels Zayn take a step towards him, hears the floorboards creaking.

‘All of this,’ Zayn says quietly, ‘everything that’s gone wrong, is because you don’t trust me.’

Harry presses the backs of his fingers into his closed eyelids, his stomach churning. ‘No, it’s not that –’

‘I trusted you so much,’ Zayn continues, his voice wobbling now, and the use of past tense hits Harry like a smack to the lungs, like he’s been hit by a car. ‘You don’t trust me.’

Harry takes a deep, gasping breath, trying to trip backwards but Zayn grabs his elbow, yanks it so Harry has to stop covering his face.

‘You – you always acted so disinterested, whenever I offered you things,’ Harry splutters. ‘I told you I’d take you anywhere, and all you said is ‘ _If you want._ ’’ Harry screws up his face, his chest shuddering with the weight of everything he’s holding in. ‘I just … can you not see how fucked up this is? Even when I thought you were in it for the money I _still_ bought you stuff. That’s how much I want you to – to –’

‘Harry –’

‘I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to make people love me. It’s the – the only thing I want in the world and it’s the only thing I can’t ever have.’

‘Harry,’ Zayn says again. He makes a move to stroke his thumb over Harry’s elbow, but then decides against it, letting his arm drop. ‘Someone fucked you up, didn’t they? Back in London?’

Inadvertently, a sob rips its way from the back of Harry’s throat, and he nods pathetically, biting down hard on his trembling lower lip as tears blur his vision.

‘Tell me the truth,’ Zayn commands, not unkindly, but firm. ‘Tell me everything, Harry.’

Harry blinks up at him, crying properly now like he hasn’t done in years and years, tears sliding down his face and dripping off the edge of his nose, his chest heaving with it. He feels like he’s being pulled apart, like Zayn’s scratched his way into Harry’s chest and is tugging all his insides out for inspection, ripping him to shreds. He feels more exposed than he’s ever done in his life, and Zayn’s gaze isn’t wavering, isn’t letting Harry escape.

The way Zayn sees the world – sees shapes in the sky and patterns in the skyline, sees right from wrong as sharp as black and white, sees the ceiling when everyone else is looking down – makes Harry fucking _anxious_. It makes him want to wrap Zayn in cotton wool and tuck him into the pocket by his heart and never let him and his trusting, sweet multicolour brain out into the awful grey world.

But now, Harry’s only desire for Zayn is to look after _him_ , to envelope him in his skinny decorated arms and make him see the good and exciting in things, just like he did ten years ago. He’s been hollow for so long, but then Zayn shuffled in and filled him up, like those empty jam jars his mum used to put flowers in. 

‘I’m so _lonely_ , Zayn,’ Harry chokes out, and he realises after he’s said it that it’s the worst thing in the world to say, worse than the other l word, worse than anything he’s ever said in his whole life. It feels sharp, sour in his mouth, like it’s crawled its way from the depths of his stomach, and he has an urge to destroy something, to grab one of the empty beer bottles and throw it at the wall, to punch Zayn in his perfect, anxious face, just so he won’t reach into his chest and yank his heart it out because hurts so much. ‘Fuck, I’m so lonely. I’m so lonely.’

And just when he’s sure Zayn will finally reach for Harry properly, wrap his arms around him, Zayn takes a step away. He runs a hand through his hair, exhales sharply, and then: ‘Talk. Please.’

Harry blinks at him, stunned, wet eyelashes tangling. ‘Zayn –’

‘Talk.’

Harry sort of seizes up, quite unable to do anything except stare at Zayn in shock and lick his salty lips in a manic kind of way. He’s so shocked the tears stop, halting awkwardly in the corners of his eyes, as though they’re unsure what to do with themselves. ‘Okay. Okay. So I – fuck. Fuck.’

Zayn doesn’t move at _all_ , doesn’t blink, barely even breathes. He just stares at Harry in that calm, serene way that usually makes Harry feel warm, but now it’s got him squirming, wringing his hands together, fiddling with his rings, twisting his cufflinks.

‘I guess it started when I … sold the Courbet, yeah? I sold it and then I got myself a house in Maida Vale. I was twenty-two and I could buy myself a house. It was like a dream, Zayn.’ He tries a toothy, false smile, but Zayn is still impassive. Harry’s smile falters, and then slips right off his face altogether, the corners of his mouth drooping down sadly.

He carries on, ‘It’s got to be luck, you know, it always has. Like, I just kind of became an art dealer out of nowhere. And everything I bought eventually sold for more, and besides being good with money and a – an interest in art and, fuck, two years dicking about in European galleries, I had no clue what I was doing. It’s in the charm. It’s all about the charm.’

Zayn raises his eyebrows – the statue moves at last – and then looks down at the kitchen table, knocking his hip against it. ‘You are very charming,’ Zayn says, deadpan. Harry’s heart ignites with panic.

He nearly takes a frenzied step towards Zayn, but collects himself at the last moment and instead does a weird sort of thrash on the spot. Zayn looks up at him, unconcerned, almost _bored_ , and Harry feels the same anger he felt when he first arrived, prickling with impatient irritation under his skin.

‘And so I ended up being friends with all these people, actors and models and whatever,’ Harry continues, looking at the shitty peeling wallpaper so he doesn’t have to see Zayn’s blank face looking at him, expectant but unrelenting, waiting but not giving. Harry’s baring his soul, and Zayn looks hollow.

‘And then, this one time, it was the evening of Daisy’s birthday and we – we all went to the ballet to see the Matthew Bourne. You know, the all-male version of _Swan Lake_. It’s funny, I’m not one for reminiscing, but fuck me, I can remember everything about that evening.’

There’s an analogue clock ticking somewhere in the black depths of Zayn’s flat, and Harry waits for nineteen ticks for Zayn to say something before realising he won’t.

‘I can remember the pink top Daisy wore, and the champagne we drank in the car on the way, just swigging it from the bottle, and the Burberry shirt I had on. Blue with white hearts. It’s funny that you remember all that shit, isn’t it? Well, I – anyway. From the moment the show started, I just stared at Alex. He didn’t have a big part, just one of the cygnets, but I just – I just stared at him like a lunatic, Zayn.’

He glances at Zayn briefly, to check whether he looks jealous, but Zayn’s just staring at his feet, arms still folded defensively across his chest, and Harry’s jaw clenches.

‘You should have seen him, Zayn,’ he goes on, his voice harder now. ‘His skin’s like – like the colour of toffee, and I’d never had that feeling before. I wanted to be _wrecked_. I wanted him to bruise me, to ruin me. Have you had that?’

Zayn nods to the floor, breath catching in what Harry can only describe as a laugh. ‘Oh, maybe.’

Harry knocks his fist against his thigh so he won’t reach out and shake him. ‘I kept going back – on my fucking _own_ like some dirty pervert – staring at Alex like a madman. And Alex noticed, of course, and he played up to it; he used to stare right back and, like, wink and lick his lips and shit. Get me hard in my seat, you know.’ 

Zayn lifts his head up, stares at Harry straight in the eye, and it’s a reaction Harry wanted but all of a sudden he’s not sure he wanted to make Zayn angry. Now they’re both angry, just glaring at each other across the kitchen, and Harry wants to be sick.

‘What happened next, Harry?’ Zayn asks, half sing-song, as though he’s humouring him, as though _Harry_ was the one who wanted to say this in the first place, and Harry has half a mind to punch him.

‘He moved in,’ Harry says through gritted teeth. ‘I took him everywhere. To restaurants and bars and parties, introduced him to all of my friends, booked him a flight to join this skiing holiday with me and Gem. When I started getting recognised by the paps, he was always in the back, like my own personal Greek fucking God. We went to Thailand in August, I bought him a car in September. And I just – I never thought once that all this spending might be a little excessive, because I used to be like you, Zayn. I used to never see the bad in anything.’

Harry doesn’t know how Zayn reacts to this because he’s busy staring at a patch of damp in the corner and trying not to cry again. It’s illuminated by the dim light from the street lamp leaking through the curtains, and if you squint, it looks a bit like a splotchy sort of alien. Harry wonders briefly if, slowly, he’s turning into Zayn.

He takes a deep, shaky breath, and continues, ‘And it’s so bad, because I – because Alex actually found me fucking irritating. Isn’t that just the… the worst thing? He didn’t even _like_ me, really.’ His voice breaks a little, but he coughs it out, stoically doesn’t look at Zayn. ‘We didn’t like any of the same things. He always got bored during my stories, found most of my stupid habits annoying, all but bloody _ignored_ me whenever we were around other people. Sometimes I thought he actually hated me. And I – fuck. Fuck.’

He looks at Zayn then, a bit desperately, needing Zayn to reach out for him because there’s a huge hole in Harry’s chest, bigger than the entire fucking room, and it’s growing with every second that Zayn doesn’t assure him that things will be all right. And Harry doesn’t know whether to cry or scream or curl up into a ball and never unfurl again.

‘That’s all there is to it. I gave him everything to make him love me, and he couldn’t even then. I wanted him to love me so much it ruined me, Zayn.’ He sniffs, eyes leaking, bottom lip wobbling. ‘Say something.’

Silence follows, for what seems like the longest amount of time ever. It’s only then that Harry realises it’s raining outside, each drop battering against Zayn’s thin window like there’s some sort of conspiracy to break in.

‘Thank you for telling me that, Harry,’ Zayn says eventually, as calm and collected as ever, unafraid to look at Harry, unafraid to rip his heart out and fling it against the wall.

‘Is that all you have to say?’ Harry asks, taking an unsteady step towards him. ‘ _Thank you_?’

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘I want you to – to fucking _feel sorry for me_!’ Harry snaps, and he knows it’s pathetic as soon as he’s said it, but an ugly kind of feeling has clawed its way to the back of his throat and, with a rough swipe over his damp cheeks, he knows it’s taken over his face too. ‘This is my _life_ , Zayn! This is my life!’

‘Yeah, and this is mine,’ Zayn replies, not even raising his voice, and that makes Harry even angrier. ‘And I basically gave it all to you. And you lied.’

‘I never lied about anything!’

‘You never told me the truth.’

Harry laughs hysterically, tugging at his hair with both hands, and then slowly, with emphasis, ‘I’ve been through this –’

‘Don’t patronise me,’ Zayn bites back sharply, losing his composure.

‘You wanted me to tell you it was fake? Do you understand what would happen if that got out, we could –’

‘Yes, I understand!’ Zayn snaps. ‘I’m not an idiot. Of course I understand.’

‘So why are you angry? I know I shouldn’t have assumed you knew, but fuck me, _everyone_ knows Connie and I are together, and I just – I just was so confused, I thought you were – and then if I thought you were in it for… I couldn’t tell you because I –’

‘I love you, Harry,’ Zayn says quietly, completely out of nowhere. Harry’s arms fall to his sides, so taken aback that they dangle there like they aren’t connected to him, his mouth parting wordlessly. ‘I thought saying it would change the whole world. But it's just the truth, isn't it?’ Zayn shrugs in the face of Harry’s astonishment, smiling gently; sadly. ‘And you need someone to be honest with you. You deserve all that love, Harry, and it's not because you bought me things, you have to know that. I love you.’

Harry gulps, his eyes stinging with the threat of more tears, but Zayn’s just so calm, blinking serenely with a fan of impossibly long, dark eyelashes, unfazed by the terrifying exposure of the innermost workings of his heart, laid out for Harry to accept or reject.

‘Fuck,’ Harry breathes. He wipes snot from under his nose roughly, unsure whether or not he should move towards Zayn or not. Instead he just hovers on the spot, eyes darting around wildly. ‘Fuck, I – I'm in love with you, too. Obviously.’

Zayn smiles again, that horrible sad smile, and shakes his head slightly. ‘You're the first person who's ever told me that, you know.

‘And I mean it. I promise,’ Harry says, grabbing for Zayn at last like he wants to press the truth into his skin.

Zayn nods. ‘You make a lot of promises, Harry Styles.’

And then he lets go.

‘I can’t feel sorry for you,’ Zayn says, turning away from Harry and talking to him over his shoulder. Harry scrambles forward in panic, but when he touches Zayn’s shoulder, Zayn shrugs him off.

‘Someone once didn’t love you, but I do,’ Zayn says. ‘They messed you up, but I won’t. Wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have done.’

The past tense makes Harry’s blood feel like it’s drying up. ‘Zayn –’

‘Now you’ve messed _us_ up.’ He turns back around, perfect face sadder than Harry’s ever seen it, and Harry’s heart actually stops when Zayn reaches for Harry’s wrist and then, with the other hand, presses the watch Harry bought him into his open palm.

‘Zayn –’

‘You should go.’

‘No, wait, please –’

‘You should go.’

‘But wait, I can –’

‘Harry, _go_.’

‘Please, just – please, please –’

‘Go.’

 

**to throw away Alex’s vinyl**

 

Harry leaves Zayn’s flat with a feeling he hasn’t had in a long time. Hysteria.

He’s felt empty and lonely and purposeless for so long that all of these feelings, a whole jumble of them tangled up together somewhere behind his ribs, feels fucking terrifying. He manages to get himself into a cab and, rain- and tear-drenched, presses his forehead against the window in an attempt to calm himself down.

Zayn’s not like Harry for a whole bunch of reasons, Harry knows this. In moments of insecurity, Harry reminds himself of all the differences between them, why they’re not as similar as Harry sometimes convinces himself they are. Zayn is perfectly content being on his own, comfortable in his own skin and company, whereas Harry needs constant attention, constant approval. Zayn is so young, so adolescent in his ideas and view of the world, existing in his dream-like state with so many possibilities rolled out ahead of him it makes Harry want to cry. He feels _old_ around Zayn. Harry made his bed a long time ago, chose the duvet and the sheets that’d make up the rest of his life, snuggled down against the pillows and tried not feel uncomfortable in them.

But there’s one fundamental difference between them, and that’s how Harry knows it’s over, leaning against the cold window and an ache like a bruise in his sternum. Zayn’s not like Harry, because he won’t settle for less than what he’s worth. Harry clung onto Alex even when he knew he was being used, and Zayn when he worried he might be. Harry accepts anything that vaguely resembles love, even if the disguise is slipping; the face paint smudging, the fake moustache drooping at the corner. He’ll grasp your hands with both of his and take you to the costume shop, offer to buy you a new one.

Zayn isn’t like that. Zayn trusts with everything he has, but he knows he deserves that trust back. He won’t stand for less than the best, because he’s worth much more than a $2500 suit. The bottom line is that Harry doesn’t trust him, or anyone, because Harry hasn’t learned that he deserves love, real love, that he shouldn’t settle for anything else. 

So Harry knows, as the cab takes him back through the rain to Fifth Avenue, that this is for the best. That doesn’t stop it hurting, though, and somehow, that seems like the cruellest thing in the world.

 

+++

 

Harry can’t remember the journey home as soon as he steps out of the elevator into his apartment, as exhausted as he is. He’s momentarily forgotten everything, actually, everything except all of the promises he’s made Zayn Malik over the past six months and the way Zayn reminded him of it tonight, after giving Harry the one thing he’s always wanted, the one thing that’s made him spend and smile and promise himself into oblivion. Love.

So he marches into his Roman marble kitchen, a world away from Zayn’s lopsided cabinets with malfunctioning hinges and burn marks in the old wood surfaces and at least three broken kettles left there to form a sad sort of graveyard, and yanks open drawers until he finds some scissors.

With his jaw clenched and his fists curled into balls, he stomps into his living room and claws his way through the pile of records until he finds _Swan Lake_. It was the only thing Alex ever gave him. Funny that, even though it was a gift to Harry, Alex still managed to make it all about himself.

Half of Harry wants to lob it out the window, but the glass is bulletproof and he’s still not sure how to open it, so instead he pulls the vinyl from the cover and doesn’t even hesitate before snapping the stupid thing in half. And then he takes the cover and cuts it with the scissors, hacking at it like a mad barber until there’s only just little Tchaikovsky snowflakes covering his knees.

 

**to meet (charm, impress, blow away) his friends**

 

For a while, Harry allows himself to mourn.

The halcyon days with Zayn are over, but it’s only now, now that Zayn’s gone, that he realises how far under his skin Zayn got. It’s like the scratchy loop of an old record, because everywhere he goes, everything he sees, Zayn rolls off his tongue like a litany.

And he looks for Zayn, too, cranes his neck whenever a boy with scruffy black hair walks past him on the street or hears a laugh in the distance that just _could_ be Zayn’s, or someone smiles with too much tongue.

_Zayn Zayn Zayn Zayn Zayn._

He flies to LA for no reason, creates meetings with former clients just so he can get away from New York before he suffocates to death. He spends a week driving around in the sun looking for Zayn on every street corner, his heart freezing hopelessly whenever he spots a boy with skin the colour of gold and small, tight appendages, almost flinging himself out of the car in moments of breathless insanity.

Then he lies in bed, alone again, and in the absence of someone else, he wraps his arms around himself and slots his fingers into the gaps of the rungs of his spine, presses the pads of his fingertips into his back.

Zayn used to love touching Harry’s back.

 

+++

 

‘Get the fuck up.’

Harry groans, presses his face into the mattress.

‘Get the fuck _up_ you piece of shit.’

‘Go away.’

He yelps as he’s drowned in light he hasn’t seen in three days, bleating and throwing an arm over his eyes. Connie yanks his arm back with long, sharp nails, and then slaps him hard across the face, hard enough that tears sting in the back of Harry’s eyes.

‘What the _fuck_ , Connie!’

Connie just glares at him, arms crossed over her chest. ‘Are you kidding me, H? Why didn’t you tell me you were in LA two weeks ago?’

‘I was – I was just trying to clear my head –’

Connie snorts, then rolls her eyes. ‘You know you’re acting like a complete moron right now. Everyone’s worried.’

‘Who is _everyone_?’ Harry asks flatly, pressing his fingers against his temple. ‘Have you had CNN ringing you up for an exclusive?’

‘Don’t get smart, Harry. You’ve disappeared off the radar, of course people are gonna talk. Fuck – even your mom’s been ringing me up!’

‘Oh, great.’

Harry pulls the duvet over his head and burrows down as far as he can beneath it, curling up into a ball.

‘Stop being so pathetic and get the fuck out of bed,’ Connie snaps. ‘I didn’t fly all the way here for you to act like a child.’

‘I didn’t ask you to come,’ Harry replies petulantly, but it’s muffled by the duvet, which Connie then tugs off again, throwing the whole thing to the floor. Harry cowers in the centre of the mattress in his underwear, flinching away from her.

‘You are aware that you’re like, an adult man, right? You’re acting like you’re fourteen.’

‘I don’t care,’ Harry wails, batting away Connie’s hand when she reaches out towards him. ‘I don’t care about anything anymore.’

Connie looks vaguely sick. ‘Oh, calm down, Romeo.’

Harry doesn’t reply, just stares pathetic and wide-eyed at Connie with a wobbling lower lip, and so Connie sighs and climbs onto the bed beside him, knocking Harry’s elbow gently with her fist.

They sit in companionable silence for a while. Connie even plays with Harry’s hair a bit, which is nice of her, but flicks her nails against Harry’s red cheek when he moans about her slapping it.

‘Grow up.’

‘Says the one who _slapped_ me.’

‘Someone had to!’

‘What kind of fucked up logic is that?’

Connie sighs, tugging at Harry’s hair harder than necessary. ‘You know, I was thinking.’

‘Hmm?’

‘You love Zayn. Like, actually love him.’

Harry tenses. ‘I know.’

‘Not in the way you loved Alex. It’s not desperate infatuation. It’s, like, proper love.’

‘Yes,’ Harry says through gritted teeth.

‘We’re getting divorced, kid. You and me. I think that’s a given. But that’s not enough.’

Harry blinks. ‘Huh?’

‘You gotta start making some changes, for yourself. See your family, your old friends. Pick yourself up. Keep your promises. Start fucking _living_.’

There’s a moment of breathless hesitancy in which Harry considers this. And Harry doesn’t like to remember, but for some reason, he thinks of waking up in the middle of the night once and holding Zayn’s ankle, just wrapping his entire hand around it, and he remembers thinking perversely that he could snap it if he wanted to. Then he looked up, and Zayn was fast asleep, not a splayed out mess of limbs like Harry sleeps but a neat arrangement of limbs, curled up like a small comma. When most people sleep, their faces are more innocent and more open, unguarded only in unconsciousness, but Zayn’s just looks the same. Half of Harry wanted to rope off the bed and create an exhibition out of him, charge people a hundred dollars a head to come and stare at this magnificent creation, this miracle of a person who had ended up naked in Harry’s sheets with Harry’s long fingers holding tightly to his skinny ankle like a rope. And the other half wanted to find a way to be _covered_ in Zayn, to wrap him around his entire body like a coat until he was invisible, until all people saw was Zayn and Harry was inside him, a secret, safe.

‘What if it’s not enough?’ Harry asks, scared of the answer. ‘What if it’s not enough for him? What if I’m not enough?’

Connie shrugs. ‘I’m as clueless as you are, pal.’

 

+++

 

Harry knows Louis works in a restaurant because Zayn told him so, but when Harry arrives one afternoon at a little hole-in-the-wall Italian joint called _Grande Pasta_ in Queens, he didn’t expect it to be quite so … unsophisticated. There are actual wine bottles with candles shoved down the neck, wax dripping in an obscene sort of way down the side.

‘What do you fucking want?’ Louis barks about five seconds after Harry’s walked in. It’s so small in here that you can see inside the entire kitchen in a way that’s not intended to be part of the new wave Dining Experience. Harry tries to ignore the fact that his shoes are sticking to the carpet.

‘Just wanted to say hello,’ Harry says as pleasantly as possible, watching as Louis throws a half-peeled potato at his bench and stalks around the pass. He stops in front of Harry, glares at him icily. ‘Hello.’

‘Hello,’ Louis says in a voice that drips with impatience, crossing his arms over his chest.

‘Hi.’

Louis clenches his teeth. ‘I’ll ask you again – what do you want?’

‘I want...’ Harry coughs, delaying the truth. ‘I want us to be friends. I want you to like me.’

Louis pauses in surprise before letting out a hoot of laughter. ‘Are you for _real_?’

‘It’s – well, it’s important to Zayn that you like me.’

‘Don’t you fucking _dare_ tell me what’s important to my friend,’ Louis snaps, pointing in Harry’s face. ‘I think I know a lot better than you.’

‘Probably.’ Harry tucks his hair behind his ear nervously, doing his best not to notice the other chefs pretending not to listen in the miniature kitchen. ‘I – I just, I want to make things right with us. And I think you would like me, if you knew me. I’m fun.’

He flashes one of his best smiles, but Louis just rolls his eyes, seemingly immune to Harry’s charms. This is new. _Everyone_ likes Harry.

‘You think this is the way you’ll get back with him? If you butter me up, he’ll forget that you’re a lying scumbag –’

‘No, no, no,’ Harry says hurriedly, tripping over his feet in his desperation as he closes the space between them, his cheeks flaming. ‘I don’t ... necessarily want him to know. We need space, yeah? I know that. I don’t want him to think I’m intruding or –’

‘But you are.’

‘No, I just – please. Please let me try and fix this, Louis.’ Louis presses his tongue into his cheek, not saying anything, so Harry continues in a flurry, ‘I know I fucked up, and I know that I wasn’t – I wasn’t giving him back what he was giving me. But I – I –’ Harry hesitates, before deciding he has nothing to lose, least of all his dignity. ‘I love him. Just – _please_.’

Louis stays impassive as he mulls this over, but he picks at the bottom of his apron with every nervous, pleading glance Harry gives him.

‘Why should I – or Zayn – give you any sort of chance, Harry? After what you did?’

Harry steps forward, sensing some relenting on Louis’ part. ‘You don’t have to, not now. But I promised Zayn that I’d meet you and that I’d win you over, and I have to try. I’ll show him why he should trust me.’

‘What are you gonna do?’ Louis asks, scanning Harry’s face carefully. ‘Buy me a Rolex?’

It’s a joke, but Harry still raises his eyebrows as if to say, _if you want?_. Louis shakes his head, stunned.

‘Keep your money, man, I don’t want that.’

Harry gulps, panicked. ‘What do you want? What can I do? Tell me.’

Someone from the kitchen mumbles _take the Rolex_ and Louis snorts out a laugh, surveying Harry with what can only be described as pity.

 

+++

 

Harry gets a car down to _Grande Pasta_ three, sometimes four times a week, for two months straight. He arranges his visits so that he’s only there when Zayn’s working, and on the weekend he doesn’t even step foot in Queens, just in case. Louis says Zayn’s been spending a lot more time with him, with El, and visiting the restaurant again when he can. This is all good news. Harry tries not to be jealous.

Harry always stops off at Starbucks on the way to pick up coffees for Louis and the other chefs, deliberating carefully over what to get them all, trying to be creative. Harry’s not sure whether Louis is deliberately trying to stifle Harry’s fun, but he won’t drink anything that isn’t just plain coffee; Harry tries cinnamon, mocha, cream, caramel but Louis won’t have any of it. The other chefs smile at Harry, though, and let him note down what they all like to remember for next time.

After the daily presentation of the coffee, Harry sets himself up at a little table in the corner, settling his Macbook on the sticky gingham tablecloth. He tends to all his emails there, and retreats outside to take phone calls out the front by the rubbish bins, trying not to lean against the grimy wall in his Givenchy shirt.

He’s not trying to be smug, but it’s clear everyone likes him there – one balding, skinny chef called Rob says he ‘ _admires Harry’s persistence_ ’, which makes Harry beam – except Louis, who remains frosty for a frustratingly long time. Harry suspects it’s more out of principle than anything, which gives him hope.

So he keeps on coming. He buys the Starbucks, he helps take the bins out, loads the dishwasher. He takes phone calls when nobody runs to the phone quick enough, and after a while Louis stops throwing himself across the restaurant to rip it out of Harry’s hands before Harry can finish bleating ‘ _Grande Pasta, Queens, how can I help you?_ ’ in his best phone voice. Andrew teaches Harry how to pull pasta through the little machine without breaking it. Dom admires Harry’s tattoos and then recommends Harry a few good places downtown he’s been to. Rachel remarks, under her breath, when Louis’ not listening, that some of the clientele has been noticeably more up-market recently, or as Rachel says, ‘ _from another scene_ ’. Harry pretends he has no idea how that’s happened.

And Louis – Louis glares and stomps around like a child, huffs and puffs like the wolf in the three little pigs, snaps at everything Harry says. But he doesn’t throw Harry out, or stop smacking lunch on Harry’s table every afternoon, or call the police. Harry takes this all as a very good sign, and stoically trots out with Louis for every cigarette break like a hopeful puppy, even though he was never actually invited.

On those breaks outside, he tells Louis about all the things he likes about Zayn, all the things they’ve done together and the little things he remembers. The way Zayn likes his tea, his favourite song, his favourite spot in New York – the lake in Prospect Park – and Louis listens in silence, nodding every now and then.

And then, one afternoon, Louis starts sitting on Harry’s table when he has his lunch, and gradually he tells him his own stories. He’s from Wilmington, Eleanor’s from Portland. They met when Eleanor came into the restaurant with some friends from NYU and she wrote her phone number on a napkin. _Love at first sight_ , says Louis, and Harry believes him. It makes his heart swell.

Eleanor drops by for the afternoon, once, bringing a crossword puzzle she saw in the newspaper and _insisting_ with quite some force that Harry help her complete it – _for fun_ , she barks. Louis rolls his eyes fondly, telling Harry that Eleanor’s a _big_ believer in organised fun.

Harry smiles as he watches them, but inside he feels that incendiary burn of loneliness, an ache that scorches right through his plasma. He twists his hands together in his lap and wishes Zayn were there to hold his hand under the table, like always.

 

**to go up the empire state building**

 

They bump into each other on Fifth Avenue.

Harry’s just sold three pieces to an immaculately dressed man from Tehran, and he strides down the sidewalk in his Lanvin trying not to grin like a crazy person when he spots Zayn – actual, real life Zayn – not far ahead of him, standing still in the middle of a crowd of people staring dreamily up at the sky.

Harry stops too, torn between sprinting over to Zayn and throwing himself at him head-first, or turning on his heel and hurrying in the other direction. He flails about on the spot, briefcase knocking against his knees, but he’s saved the decision when Zayn’s gaze slides languidly from the sky to Harry in one fluid, unblinking movement, as though he knew, somehow, Harry was there.

He stares for a moment, and honestly, Harry feels strangely wired, like he’s done a fat line of coke off the top of his briefcase. There’s a sudden ringing of his ears, frighteningly loud, like he’s been dunked under water, and his heart beats in his skull to the tune of _Zayn, Zayn, Zayn_ as he drinks in the stubble sweeping over his jaw, remembering how it felt against his cheek, on his stomach, in between his thighs. He’s changed his hair – it’s shaved at the sides now, long at the top and flopping over to one side. Zayn blinks, licking his lips slowly in an absent-minded kind of way, and Harry stumbles forward involuntarily, the magnetic draw of Zayn’s tongue pulling him closer.

Zayn’s a good person. And Harry’s drawn to it like a moth to a fucking flame.

He loves animals, he loves children, he always puts his spare change into the charity collection boxes at coffee shops and supermarkets. He makes tea for the busker who stands outside his apartment building on Tuesdays every week without fail, he smiles at old ladies and pets dogs tied up on lampposts waiting for their owners. Zayn grins at people, all tongue and teeth and a scrunched up nose, and sometimes Harry has a feeling like he wants to punch the goodness out of him, so he can share even a fraction of it with Harry.

He's like a caricature of a person, how lovely he can be, how kindness seeps from him like it's contagious, but it's not.

Zayn should hate Harry, because Harry accidentally broke his heart, ripped it from his chest and tossed it to the ground and jumped on it until all that remained was a limp, necrotic corpse that barely resembled itself, withered and dying at Harry’s feet. But Zayn can never say no to inherently nice people, Harry knows that, and so Zayn raises his hand and waves to Harry, and Harry’s feet drag the rest of him over like a ragdoll.

‘Zayn! Zayn – hi.’

‘Hey.’ Zayn smiles, shifts his rucksack on his shoulders. ‘You all right?’

‘Oh, just – just great, yeah.’ Harry bites at his lip, surveying Zayn with some surprise. He’s wearing an outfit bought entirely by Harry, smart and slim fitting jacket, framing his broad shoulders, skinny Armani jeans. Harry feels a strange sense of pride. ‘You still wear this stuff?’

Zayn swallows a little nervously, then raises his chin slightly, shrugging. ‘Yeah, I like it. Money looks good on me, yeah?’

Harry nods, his heart seizing up sadly in his chest. ‘Yeah.’

‘Good meeting?’ Zayn asks after a brief moment of silence, gesturing to the briefcase.

‘Not bad,’ Harry says, tucking his hair behind his ears, and then, because he’s desperate to keep Zayn here as long as he can, ‘You like Fleetwood Mac, right?’

Zayn shrugs noncommittally.

‘Well, funny story – I sold Christine McVie a painting a few years ago, I can’t remember if I told you. She said, _you have nice hair, Harry, never cut it_ , then said I'm welcome any time to stay with her in Kent. God forbid I actually showed up, she'd probably have a heart attack.’ Harry laughs, looks down the street at a woman battling with an overly long scarf because meeting Zayn's eye is like staring at the sun. ‘She sent me a birthday card last week.’

‘But your birthday isn’t for…’

‘Two months, I know. Either she’s barking mad, or incredibly efficient.’

Zayn grins slowly, biting down on his lip, before nodding. ‘Good to know. You know, I once served the fit one from Corrie when I was working at ASDA.’ His face twists up in horror towards the end of this sentence, as though a voice in his head is shrieking _NO!_ , and although Zayn’s story is admittedly a little Z-list in comparison to Harry’s, Harry still scrambles to grasp at it.

‘What did she buy?’

‘Just – just cheese and tampons.’

There’s a pause in which Zayn looks like he’s considering ways to slither between the cracks in the pavement in his embarrassment, before Harry grins lopsidedly, stepping forward to close much of the space between them. ‘Now that,’ he says, eyes dancing, ‘is a story.’

Zayn blinks up at him, smiling gently, before stepping away. ‘I should go,’ he says, scratching at the back of his neck. ‘I’ll … see you around, I guess.’

‘Uh, yeah, you too,’ Harry replies, trying his best not to sound stung. Zayn shuffles off in the direction of the subway wrapped up in the jacket Harry bought him from Acne only three months ago, and Harry’s stomach settles somewhere on the pavement between his boots until Zayn turns, worming his way back to Harry through past collections of tourists.

‘By the way, I quit,’ Zayn says, a little breathlessly.

‘What?’ Harry replies, confused.

‘I quit working for Nick. This morning. I don’t know if you’ve heard already.’

‘No – no I hadn’t.’

‘It’s because I got a job,’ Zayn continues, chest puffing up slightly, the tease of a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. ‘An illustration job.’

‘No way!’

‘You heard of Niall Horan?’

‘He wrote that bestseller, right? _Panda_ something –’

‘ _The Scarlett Panda_ , yeah. He’s doing a whole series this time, lowering the target age slightly and wants someone to illustrate it.’ Zayn pauses, grinning. ‘Wants _me_ to illustrate it.’

Harry gulps. ‘That’s so great, Zayn.’

Zayn nods, smiles goofily, and then walks away for the second time, although this time he doesn’t come back. Harry watches him go, the absence of Zayn again after the tiniest reprieve hurting more than he thought he would, an emptiness in his chest like a gutted chest of drawers, hanging open sadly, its contents pilfered.

And then, still in his suit and still clutching his briefcase to his side, he walks further down Fifth, waits patiently for two hours in the queue for the Empire State Building amidst babbling tourists and screaming children, despite the fact he could have paid $40 extra for fast track. It’s part of the experience.

At the top, he leans against the railing until his fingers are numb and the hollow under his cheekbones aches it’s so cold, staring down at the city he never cared to look at because it served only as an escape. And it is beautiful – grey and menacingly orderly, tight lines and squares that you don’t see in England, but beautiful all the same.

Without Alex, without Zayn, New York is still New York, the sky is still the sky, Harry’s still Harry. He doesn’t need love in order to exist, and with that knowledge settling inside him, the city feels as familiar now as the dirt under his fingernails did after two years washing in other people’s sinks, as familiar as the warmth of his mum’s duvet at home. _Home._ Maybe this is home, now, and maybe he doesn’t mind.

His hair flaps in the breeze, whips his cold face hard, and there’s something brewing steadily as the bubble of a kettle inside of him that feels a lot like contentedness, or quite possibly, happiness.

 

**to watch all the _Batmans_**

 

For Christmas, Harry flies over to Spain to see his mum and step-dad. Gem joins them too, and the four of them spend Christmas day huddled in a villa somewhere south of Seville. They go on a long beach walk on Boxing Day, Harry’s arm tucked inside his mum’s, and he feels himself relax a bit, the weight between his shoulder blades shifting slightly. Being with them reminds him of where he’s come from, who he is. Who he doesn’t have to be and who he’ll always be.

Zayn texts him at about 9pm on Boxing Day, and Harry has a small meltdown in his mum’s villa, shrieking loudly enough that Gemma runs in wielding a rolled up magazine, ready to smack away any intruders. It only says _Merry Christmas, Harry! :) x_ but it’s enough to make Harry wail in despair, clutching his face with one hand and keeping a firm grip on his phone with the other, because Gem is the sort of person to snatch it from him and type back a response herself.

After hashing out the entire affair with his family – Harry’s family are the type of people who believe in Talking Things Through surrounded by calming scented candles – Harry sends Zayn a text back.

 _Thank you_ , it says, _and the same to you too._

There’s some debate about whether or not to send a kiss, but before Harry can sneakily add one on in a separate text against Gemma’s advice, a new text comes in.

_Nick told me about the divorce – hope everything’s okay x_

Harry blinks at his phone, and then wrenches himself from the sofa and away from the bleating queries of his mum and sister. He rounds the corner, padding across the flagstone floor before slipping into the bathroom and locking the door.

 _It’s fine,_ he types back, fingers shaking. _We always knew it would happen, didn’t we? Apparently papers are saying I cheated on her, though, which sucks._

There’s only about a three second wait before Zayn replies. _They know about me?_

Harry gulps, heart thundering as he texts back, _No, I don’t think so._

 _Oh okay_ , is Zayn’s reply, and Harry can’t help wondering whether that’s relief or disappointment. _Speak soon :) x_

 _Yes please,_ Harry replies before he can stop himself. _xxx_

 

+++

 

New Years’ Eve is a decidedly less tranquil affair. Harry flies to Austria from Spain to meet up with some of the old London set – Daisy and Pixie and the others – in St. Anton. There’s twelve of them in total in the chalet for a week, surviving solely on a nutritious diet of champagne and chocolate muffins. Harry tumbles down the slope headfirst for the fiftieth time, skis clamped tightly to his feet and laughter creasing up his red face, and feels twenty again. He kisses Daisy at midnight on the thirty-first, just a short press of their Moët-bitter lips, but something in him soars, and when he pulls away from her and hugs her to his chest tightly, he recognises it as hope. There’s hope.

Zayn texts him again on New Year’s Eve, a picture of all his sisters wrapped up in scarves and mittens clutching sparklers. _Happy New Year from us ! x_

Harry’s heart splinters helplessly, staring down at his phone while everyone around him licks champagne off each other’s faces and sings badly along to Auld Lang Syne. Zayn’s with his sisters – he must be in Bradford, and as such, he’s got an hour till midnight. Harry’s quite literally in the future, a whole year ahead.

 _You too,_ Harry texts back, and then, because he’s more than a bit drunk, _I fucking miss you_

There’s quite a wait before Zayn replies, in which someone pours what feels and smells like chocolate cream liqueur down his neck and then licks it off again. Harry laughs, bats them away, and stares like an actual madman at his phone until it notifies him of Zayn’s reply.

_Miss you, Harry x_

And Harry, in his joy, flings himself about on the spot before slipping in a puddle of alcohol and falling flat on his back, limbs flailing almost gracefully mid-flight.

In all seeing in the new year in Austria turns out to be an altogether success, only partially dampened by the news, conveyed anxiously to him on their last night, that Alex recently got engaged – to a choreographer, he’s told, a man with a fraction of Harry’s money but rather disconcertingly probably triple the stamina. Harry tries to be offended just because everyone expects him to, blinking at him with wide-eyed pity, but for some reason, he’s hardly upset at all.

 

+++

 

Still, he’s not quite ready to go back home yet – home being, strangely enough, New York – so Harry takes himself to London, the very place he was running from in the first place. London’s great in January, bitingly cold with a depressing sort of post-Christmas disappointment hanging in the air like smoke, but familiar and comforting all the same. Harry considers actually going out and _enjoying_ London, but apart from lunch with Gemma and her politician boyfriend – a total wanker, but Harry’s too polite to say so – at a restaurant this side of Edgware Road, he can’t bring himself to leave his suite at The Dorchester for longer than a few minutes just yet.

He’s moping again, is what’s happening. It’s just that he’s helplessly in love with someone much too young and brilliant and special for him, and the more he thinks about it, the worse it feels. He tries to remember annoying things about Zayn, but distressingly, there aren’t any. He spends about four hours each day staring at the National Rail website, contemplating getting a train ticket to Bradford, before closing the tab and telling himself to get a grip.

Zayn’s probably back in New York by now, anyway, and if not, he’s spending time with his family. The world doesn’t revolve around the union of Harry and Zayn, however much it feels like it does.

So ten days after he first checked in to The Dorchester, Harry’s half-way through _Batman Forever_ , a glass of whisky in one hand and his phone in the other with Wikipedia pulled up – he’s finding the plot too confusing to follow on his own, which is tragic considering kids can adequately grasp the details without help from the internet – when the elevator chimes to let him know he has a visitor.

He frowns and looks down at himself; slobbed across the bed in an old holey t-shirt and sweatpants, he’s hardly dressed to fight off a burglar or greet a surprise guest, but before he can think to move the person comes – or rather, stumbles – into view.

‘Zayn!’ Harry chokes, jolting and pouring his entire glass of whisky into his lap. ‘Fuck– what are you –?’

‘Lady on the desk let me up,’ Zayn slurs, and then, knocking his hand drunkenly against his chest, ‘Flirted with her, y’know. She felt sorry for me.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘I had to tell her your birthday and your credit card number so she knew I wasn’t a stranger. Or a psycho.’

‘Oh.’

'You know it's my birthday?'

'Of course I do,' Harry says gently. It's not like he's been able to think of much else. 'I - I meant to text you, but I...' Harry trails off, unsure what else to say.

Zayn tilts his head to the side and glares at Harry suspiciously. ‘You went up the Empire State Building.’

Harry gulps, pauses the TV carefully. ‘I – uh, yeah?’

‘And you’ve been…’ Zayn pauses, running a hand through his hair ‘…hanging out with Louis.’

Harry stiffens, trying to ignore the creeping damp through his sweatpants. ‘Just a couple of times. How do you know?’ When Zayn doesn’t reply, Harry scrambles to his feet. ‘Are you mad?’

Zayn laughs, a strange, high-pitched laugh that Harry hasn’t heard before. ‘ _Am I mad_? Good question.’

‘I – I’m really sorry.’

‘You’re _sorry_?’

‘I didn’t mean to intrude or anything, I didn’t know if –’

‘Louis told me,’ Zayn interrupts loudly, staring at Harry with uncomfortable intensity, his eyes dark and blood-shot, ‘that I should give you another chance.’

Harry goes as cold as the ice-cold whisky that’s now soaked its way through to his dick. ‘Oh,’ is all he says.

Zayn nods, gives a closed-lipped, almost sarcastic smile, and then his gaze shifts at last, slipping slowly to the TV behind Harry. ‘And you’re watching _Batman._ ’

‘Uh –’

‘You’re watching _Batman_!’ Zayn wails hysterically, hands lifting to cover his face as he shakes his head in despair.

‘Are you – are you all right?’

Harry edges towards him, concerned. Zayn wears his heart on his sleeve, admittedly, but not like this. Not with drunken anger, not with incomprehensible exclamations of anguish.

‘No!’ Zayn snaps, flailing a hand out to push Harry away. ‘No I’m not fucking okay!’

‘What’s happened?’

‘ _You_! You happened!’

Harry frowns. ‘I – uh… I’m sorry?’

‘You’re _sorry_?’

‘Zayn –’

‘I made an Instagram,’ Zayn says slowly, enunciating every word and dropping his hands to glower at Harry. ‘Niall gave me his old iPhone for Christmas and I made an _Instagram_.’

Harry nods, looks around confusedly as though help might materialise from somewhere, before saying, ‘Well, that’s great, Zayn.’

‘You fucking Instagrammed the Empire State Building!’ Zayn snarls, stepping towards Harry in such a way that Harry feels compelled to take a step back. ‘You went up without me!’

Harry freezes, his eyes widening. ‘That’s – that’s why you’re upset?’

‘The caption was fucking ‘ _cool view’_. What the fuck is wrong with you?’

Harry gulps at air. ‘Well, I –’

‘And you’re doing all this stuff, and you – you’re like a fucking _ghost_!’ Zayn goes on, flapping his hands in his agitation. ‘We’re not together, but you’re _everywhere_. You won’t let go of me!’

‘Zayn –’

‘It’s bad enough that you’re fucking _everywhere_ , in everything I look at. I can’t even look at my bed without thinking of you anymore.’

Harry swallows harshly. ‘Zayn –’

‘And then I – I try and be a normal person, keep going, get a proper job, read the papers, get a fucking Instagram. I’ve seen my family and I’m hanging out more with Lou and El again because I was a total fucking _idiot_ when I was with you and just dropped everyone else, and you’re – you’re still just _there_!’ He sniffs, and Harry’s alarmed to see tears pool in his eyes before he looks down and away from Harry.

‘Zayn, I…’ He’d meant to say more, but he can’t think of anything else to say, so he just trails off pathetically.

‘You’re doing everything you promised, aren’t you?’ Zayn says quietly. ‘Why didn’t you … why?’

‘I wanted to give you space,’ Harry explains, twisting his fingers together so he doesn’t grab Zayn’s chin and lift it up in order to meet his eyes again. ‘I think we needed space.’

‘Yeah,’ Zayn agrees. ‘Space. Not _four months_. Not four months. I didn’t agree to that.’

‘You don’t – you shouldn’t settle for someone like me. Or the person I was before.’

Zayn huffs out a moody, teenage kind of laugh. ‘ _Settle_.’

‘Zayn,’ Harry says softly, taking tentative steps to close the space between them. ‘Zayn, look at me.’

‘Fuck off,’ Zayn snaps, flinging out his arm so that it bats Harry in the chest. ‘I hate that you’re a good person, you know that? On paper I should – I should _hate_ you, but I don’t. I can’t. That’s awful. You’ve fucked me over for that.’

‘Zayn –’

‘Everything I did at home over Christmas, I thought of you. I thought you’d hold your hands over my little sister’s ears during the fireworks on New Year’s Eve, or – or fucking talk about cars with my dad, or just – just _be there_ , and make me feel like a person again.’

Harry’s chest feels like it’s collapsing in on itself. ‘Listen to me –’

Zayn shakes his head wildly. ‘Don’t try and talk sense into me or some shit! I don’t want to hear you patronise me, Harry.’

‘I’m not, I just –’

‘Shut up!’ Zayn snarls, and before Harry can say anything else, Zayn’s flying towards him in a blur of limbs and, in a cat-like pounce, he grabs Harry’s face and smashes his lips to his, digging his nails into Harry’s cheekbones.

Harry stands there stunned for a moment, damp sweatpants clinging to the skin of his thigh, arms dangling limply at his sides. Zayn claws at his face, his stubble scratching Harry’s skin, the corners of his mouth, and then instinct takes over and Harry wraps both arms around Zayn’s waist, pulling him closer and prising open his mouth with his own.

It’s been so long and Harry feels like he might _die_ when their tongues touch, his whole body loosening, melting forward into Zayn. He wants to savour it, wants to retrace every inch of Zayn’s mouth with his tongue, wants to delicately stroke every pore on his skin, but Zayn’s got other ideas. He’s tugging at Harry’s hair, biting at his mouth, pulling him closer by fisting his old t-shirt and yanking roughly. He clumsily slips his fingers below the waistband of Harry’s sweatpants, pulling away from Harry’s mouth to see what he’s doing.

‘You look like a fucking tramp,’ he jokes, flashing Harry a lopsided smile, and Harry can only laugh breathlessly because Zayn looks _amazing_ , still wearing the expensive clothes Harry bought him, still wearing them like they were tailor-made for him.

‘Zayn, wait,’ Harry croaks out when Zayn manages to pull Harry’s sweats down and gives his damp crotch an inelegant grope. He squeezes his eyes shut, taking a deep, hopefully calming breath. ‘You’re so drunk, I can’t do this.’

‘No, no I’m not,’ Zayn mumbles, leaning back in for another kiss.

‘I can’t,’ Harry says again, sighing when Zayn bites at his neck. ‘Please don’t, I can’t.’

‘You know I want you drunk and I want you sober,’ Zayn says into his ear, nipping at it as he presses the heel of his hand into Harry’s crotch. ‘But I was too scared to come up here sober. Sat at the bar downstairs for two hours. Had to come round drunk.’

‘Don’t,’ Harry gasps, his brain dissolving a bit when Zayn licks a thin stripe up his neck. ‘Just – just don’t.’

‘Please,’ Zayn says, begging now, pressing his forehead into Harry’s shoulder. ‘Please, Harry. Please.’

Harry nearly gives in, he really does. He’s half hard now, anyway, and Zayn’s pressed up against him, breathing heavily into Harry’s shoulder, clutching at Harry’s t-shirt with both hands. It would be easy for him to say yes.

‘I’m sorry,’ Harry whispers, gently pushing Zayn back by his shoulders. Zayn blinks at him drunkenly, mouth wet and hanging open, eyelashes hanging like drapes over heavy-lidded eyes.

‘You don’t want me,’ Zayn says flatly, not asking. ‘You don’t want me anymore.’

It’s such an adolescent conclusion, dramatic and unfairly presumptuous, that Harry has to stop himself from laughing. ‘Of course not, you idiot. Of course I want you.’

‘Whatever,’ Zayn mumbles. ‘Fuck you.’

Harry sighs. ‘Zayn.’ He’s walking – stumbling – towards the door, hand frequently pressing against the wallpaper to hold himself up. ‘Zayn.’ Harry pulls up his sweatpants with one hand and follows him. ‘Zayn.’

‘ _What?_ ’

‘Stay.’ Harry reaches for his hand and squeezes it. It’s unlikely Zayn has anywhere to go, anyway, and had probably banked on the fact that he and Harry would fuck and then crash in Harry’s room. Still, his eyes widen in surprise when Harry says it, gazing up at him with that familiar adoration that makes Harry’s pulse thicken. ‘Stay.’

 

+++

 

Harry wakes up the next morning with a mouthful of hair. He splutters, clawing it out of his mouth and squirming about on the mattress, but he goes very, very still when he realises it’s not his hair.

Zayn’s hair.

He put Zayn to bed last night and set himself up with a blanket and couple of pillows on the sofa, but Zayn was having none of it. He tossed and turned and grumbled about ‘ _not being able to sleep_ ’ until Harry took the hint and climbed into bed beside him, letting Zayn curl up behind him and wrap his arm around Harry’s waist.

In the night they’ve adjusted so that they’re facing each other, and Zayn’s nose is pressed to Harry’s chest, his hair spread across the pillow, worming its way into Harry’s mouth. Harry just lies there and breathes for a moment, inhaling the familiar scent of Zayn, in the same way he did when he stepped into his mum’s old flat for the first time when he got back from Europe. When he was home.

He strokes a finger down Zayn’s spine, presses the pads of his fingers into Zayn’s back, runs his knuckles over the hard rigging of Zayn’s ribs. Zayn sighs, presses his face further into Harry’s chest, and all of a sudden, Harry feels weirdly emotional, like he could start crying. Instead, Harry shifts and closes his mouth over Zayn’s shoulder, drags his teeth along Zayn’s collarbone. Zayn shivers, his eyelashes fluttering, his fingers twitching at his sides.

Harry presses Zayn to his back gently and hovers over him, kissing the wings on his chest, running his tongue over Zayn’s nipple. Zayn arches his back slightly, properly awake now, reaching to push Harry’s hair back from his face.

‘Morning,’ Harry says, biting at the playing card tattoo on Zayn’s ribs.

‘Fuck,’ is all Zayn replies, exhaling it.

Harry sucks on the tattoo on Zayn’s hip, tracing the letters of _don’t think I won’t_ with his tongue, before nosing at Zayn’s dick through his boxers. Zayn hisses, watching Harry through his lashes, and Zayn’s always been the more talkative of the two of them during sex but it still surprises Harry when he mutters, ‘Hurry up.’

‘Bossy,’ Harry says with poorly concealed delight, nipping at the skin of Zayn’s thigh.

‘Please,’ Zayn adds on belatedly.

Harry grins devilishly as he peels back Zayn’s underwear. ‘Please what?’

Zayn rocks his hips up impatiently, his dick poking Harry in the cheek. ‘Make me come, Harry.’

‘How?’

‘Fuck, I don’t care.’ Harry mouths at Zayn’s dick teasingly and Zayn’s breath halts, squeezing Harry’s hair between his fingers. ‘Come on, please. Please.’

Harry sucks Zayn down with hollow cheeks, makes it wet and fast. People have always complimented Harry on his mouth, a commendation Harry has always been fond of, but none of them have ever reacted quite like Zayn does that morning, his whole body tensing, his breath catching somewhere deep in his lungs, refusing to be expelled.

He watches Harry the whole time through a thick sweep of eyelashes, grips Harry’s hair in a tight fist. When Harry shrugs the duvet off his shoulders and braces himself against Zayn’s hips, thumbs pressed into the crease of his v-lines, Zayn bends one knee and props his calf against Harry’s shoulder. Harry exhales through his nose and takes Zayn further, further, until his lips are pressed against the base and Zayn groans.

‘It’s been months, Harry,’ Zayn says breathlessly, digging his heel into Harry’s shoulder blade. ‘Months. So long.’

Harry hums his agreement and Zayn shudders, feeling the tremor of it through his whole body.

‘D-did you fuck anyone else?’

Harry tries an approximation of shaking his head, but doesn’t pull off to do it properly. He’d rather die than pull off at this point.

‘Did you want to?’

Harry shakes his head again, his throat fluttering around Zayn’s dick. Zayn jerks his hips up and tears prick in Harry’s eyes.

‘I – fuck, I wanted you all the time,’ Zayn splutters, yanking at Harry’s hair in an absent kind of way but so hard that tears leak out of the corners of Harry’s eyes, slipping down his cheeks. ‘Can’t e-ever think about anything else.’

Harry closes his eyes and tries to concentrate on not sobbing mid-blow-job like some mental case, but it’s hard when Zayn’s still looking down at him like he’s just flown Zayn across space and back again, given him a tour of the galaxy.

 _He’s so young_ , Harry tries to remind himself. _He doesn’t know any better._ But somehow, that doesn’t seem like a valid excuse anymore.

‘I’m gonna fuck you,’ Zayn promises with a gasp, throwing his head back. He’s close; his hips push up into Harry’s mouth continually, hitting him in the back of the throat so that Harry briefly considers pulling off to catch his breath, but instead just grips Zayn’s hips harder, pressing purple grape bruises into him. ‘So – so fucking good you n-never fucking forget me.’

Harry whimpers, pressing his aching dick down into the sheets. Zayn’s mouth opens, perhaps to say something else, but he’s so robbed of breath he can’t and instead he jolts his hips up one last time so that Harry actually chokes, and then he’s coming.

There’s a million things Harry wanted to do with Zayn just now, wanted to suck every inch of skin, wanted to touch and grip and fuck him, wanted to feel Zayn inside him, but as he watches Zayn come, finally silent, his mouth hanging open and his eyes shut, he can’t remember any of them. It feels perfect as it is.

 

+++

 

They take a shower – in which Zayn wanks off Harry with the fancy grapefruit body-wash The Dorchester have provided and then gets on his knees to taste it - and order room service before they talk properly. Harry says Zayn can have anything, expecting the usual response of ‘ _I don’t mind_ ’, and so he’s pleasantly surprised when Zayn says he wants waffles. Harry orders them, along with a fruit salad, croissants, tea and a mimosa each, and they’re neglecting the dining table in favour of having actual breakfast in bed, curled up under the duvet like little kids on a Saturday morning.

Harry sends Louis a text when Zayn slips to the bathroom, just a ‘ _Thank you_ ’ with no context or explanation. Louis, clearly up early, replies ‘ _Don’t fuck it up, asshole_ ’ followed by ‘ _PS you owe me. Restaurant needs a new blender._ ’ Harry smiles, and when Zayn climbs back in beside him he kisses the smile off Harry’s face.

‘When are you flying back to New York?’ Harry asks eventually, because he can’t put it off any longer. It’d be nice to create an island out of the bed here and never, ever get out of it, but Zayn has a life that extends beyond Harry. He’s an illustrator now, for a best-selling novelist. There’s definitely deadlines to be met and meetings to attend, Harry assumes, a world of projects and targets and co-workers which is fairly alien to him.

‘Wednesday, from Manchester,’ Zayn says flatly, tearing at a croissant and stuffing it into his mouth.

‘I go Monday,’ Harry says, even though Zayn hadn’t asked. ‘Heathrow.’

_Four days._

Zayn chews pensively and then swallows, pushing his hair off his face. ‘I accidentally didn’t bring a bag or anything down here, you know. It was a bit spontaneous. I just kind of, like… got on a train.’

Harry smiles, fairly sure there’s actually no one on the planet sweeter than Zayn. ‘Yeah? How’d you know I was here, Sherlock?’

Zayn flushes a little. ‘Instagram,’ he admits, licking his lips a little self-consciously. ‘Using the Internet is actually the easiest way to stalk people. I’ve been enlightened.’

‘I’m glad.’

‘Also, I don’t want to be Sherlock. Can’t I be someone cooler?’

Harry frowns. ‘Sherlock _is_ cool. Robert Downey Jr. is Sherlock.’

‘No,’ Zayn disagrees, smiling. ‘Benadryl whatshisface is Sherlock.’

‘Who?’

Zayn rolls his eyes. ‘This is what happens when you’re a hippie who doesn’t watch TV.’ He smiles, his perfect, crinkle-eyed smile that makes Harry wish he were the sort of person who could write poems, and then, with little subtlety, shuffles closer to Harry.

‘You’ll have to teach me everything I’ve missed out on.’

‘Okay.’ Zayn leans forward, his hand on Harry’s thigh as he catches Harry’s lips gently with his own. It’s not a kiss intended to be deepened, just a short, soft brush of their lips together, and when Zayn leans back and smiles at Harry almost shyly, Harry’s chest might actually concave.

‘Do you want to stay here?’ Harry asks quickly, breathlessly, grasping at Zayn’s fingers as though that might be persuasive in some way. ‘I – until your flight. Just for four days. With me.’

The corners of Zayn’s mouth pull up, and he nods, just once. Harry kisses the corner of his mouth, and then the stubbly curve of his jaw, the tip of his nose. ‘Just you and me,’ Harry says, nipping at Zayn’s upper lip. ‘Four days. We don’t have to think about anything from – from before. Yeah?’

He doesn’t need to add _and after_ , because he knows Zayn’s thinking it too.

Zayn nods again. ‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

 

+++

 

They don’t go out that first afternoon, just finish watching the _Batmans_ curled up under the duvet. Harry orders them burgers and onion rings and milkshakes for dinner and bottles of red wine for afterwards, and he’s usually opposed to such awful food, but it’s what Zayn asks for and Harry can’t say no. He barely eats any of it himself, just watches Zayn stuff everything into his mouth at once with his eyes trained on the screen, as though deliberately reminding Harry of how young and excellent his metabolism is.

By the time the credits are rolling on _The Dark Knight Rises_ , Harry’s restless. Zayn’s barely even looked away from the screen since the film began, but he’s been drinking red wine from the bottle, his lips wrapped obscenely around the rim, and as a result Harry’s squirming, the promise Zayn made earlier lounging heavily over all the most active parts of his brain. 

Zayn either doesn’t notice or impressively pretends not to. He switches over to 4Music, smiling delightedly at Harry when the playlist of the hour reveals itself to be _Songs from the 70s._

‘Right up your street,’ he says, poking Harry with the remote.

‘Mmm,’ Harry agrees absently. ‘Love 10cc.’

‘ _Really?_ ’ Zayn says incredulously, sliding his hands up Harry’s thighs when Harry clambers into his lap, straddling Zayn’s waist. ‘You’re a cliché, Harry Styles.’

‘My mum’s favourite band!’ Harry defends, running his fingers through Zayn’s hair and nipping at his neck. ‘Tell me you don’t love this song. I _love_ this song.’

Zayn listens carefully, lips tight, before he glances at Harry with a slow grin. ‘Is this your sex song?’

‘The words ‘ _I’m not in love_ ’ over and over aren’t very sexy, Zayn.’

‘It’s a sexy song, though.’

Harry licks his lips before grinning lewdly. ‘Do you know why they’re called 10cc?’

‘No.’

‘It’s the average amount of male come,’ Harry says with a smirk. ‘10cc’s a measurement.’

‘Are you joking?’ Harry shakes his head, snorting, and then Zayn laughs too. ‘This became a lot less sexy.’

The laughing shifts quickly, and somewhat clumsily, into kissing, Harry’s arms tightening around Zayn’s neck, rolling his hips down into Zayn’s lap. Harry licks his way out of Zayn’s mouth and down his neck dirtily, biting at Zayn’s skin, sucking on it until Zayn shivers.

‘Zayn.’

‘Yeah, Harry?’

‘Will – will you fuck me now?’

Zayn licks his lips. ‘Fuck, yeah.’

 

+++

 

They start with Zayn sucking Harry off slow, opening him up at the same time at the same agonising speed, until Harry’s thighs are shaking and he shoves Zayn’s head back. Zayn blinks at him, lips slick with spit and red from the wine, before he leans up and kisses Harry, cupping his face with one hand.

Even now, achingly hard and throbbing all over, Harry could probably kiss Zayn forever. The curl of his tongue, soft and hard all at once, the way his lips drag down to the very corners of Harry’s mouth, the way he bites at his lips like he wants to draw blood but thinks better of it at the very last moment. Harry wouldn’t mind.

There’s a moment while Zayn busies himself with condoms and lube – the only things he brought with him from Bradford, funnily enough – where Harry’s momentarily untouched, and, heavy-lidded, he stares out of the window at London, at the faint smudge of the stars, dimmed and blurred because of the lights below. It’s funny – how the fake lights down here make the real lights up there less bright, shrouding them. This is such a Zayn-like thought that Harry’s about to tell Zayn and see if he agrees, when suddenly Zayn’s hovering over him, leaning forward and pressing himself into Harry.

‘Are you all right?’ Zayn asks, voice a little strained, and Harry nods firmly. Zayn nods back, the pair of them just nodding at each other until Zayn laughs and Harry does too. Up close, Zayn’s laugh is like nothing Harry’s ever seen – his eyes little semi-circles, tongue pressed against his teeth, mouth hanging open – and it’s enough to get Harry through the discomfort when Zayn sinks in further, sighing against Harry’s mouth. Harry just gulps and tries to concentrate on something else; someone as equally morbid as 10cc is wailing on 4Music. The sheets beneath him are soft, nicer than Harry’s sheets in New York. Zayn smells like summer and sugar and sweat, a smell Harry wants to lick.

At first it’s just very hot and tight, the burn of being stretched too uncomfortable to be pleasurable. He knows he’ll feel this tomorrow, a dull ache like he’s been ripped in half and glued hastily back together.

‘Christ,’ Harry mutters as Zayn works up to a steady rhythm, fingers digging hard into Harry’s waist, eyelids quivering.

‘I know.’

‘Are _you_ all right?’ Harry asks, rubbing his thumb across Zayn’s shoulder blade.

‘Yeah,’ Zayn says, brow pulling in. ‘’S fucking tight.’ He grabs at Harry’s hips, tilts them up, and – _fuck_. Zayn pulls back, drives in again, his hair flopping over his eyes, and Harry hears a small breathless moan before realising that he made it. ‘You like it?’

Harry can’t respond even though his mouth parts; he grips at Zayn’s back, head tilting back against the pillow, eyelids lulling to a close.

That’s all it takes for Zayn to forget to be careful, forehead dropping to Harry’s shoulder as he snaps his hips forward harder and harder, biting at Harry’s skin until it hurts. Everything hurts – Zayn’s teeth at his skin, his fingers on his hips, the searing throb where their two bodies connect – but suddenly Harry loves it, is chasing it, the reminder he’ll have of Zayn all over him tomorrow. He pushes down when Zayn pushes up, making noises he hasn’t made in a long time, so indecent it should be embarrassing.

‘I missed you,’ Harry breathes, reaching to grab at himself between them. He nearly comes just from the initial brush of his fingers, his whole body tensing before he lets out a shaky exhale of relief.

‘Harry –’ Zayn warns, and there’s lightning in his blood, hot and jarring, twisting up Harry’s spine and spitting down all his nerves, humming beneath his skin.

‘So hot,’ Harry moans, licking Zayn’s jaw messily. ‘Missed this.’ He thumbs over the head of his dick, and it’s like the entire contents of Harry’s lungs tumble out of his mouth, like he’s just fallen out of a tree.

‘I know,’ Zayn breathes back. ‘All I thought about.’ 

Harry’s back arches, molten white shapes twisting behind his eyelids, and then he’s coming with his heels digging into the mattress and his nails raking across Zayn’s back. He pants through it, viscous warmth covering his and Zayn’s stomachs, and there’s a brief spell of dizziness, like he’s just stumbled off the teacups at the funfair, before he realises Zayn’s coming too, his body jerking above Harry’s and spit falling from his slack mouth onto Harry’s shoulder.

They lie there for a while afterwards, Harry’s face buried into Zayn’s shoulder and Zayn’s hands running up and down his back, threading the hair at the base of his neck through his fingertips before sliding down all the ridges of his spine, thumbing at the cut of Harry’s v-lines.

‘You know I won’t ever forget,’ Harry says quietly.

‘I know,’ Zayn says.

 

**to finish the Book about the Cat**

 

As tempting as it is to stay inside and fuck all day, they only have two full days together and so resolutely decide to Make the Most of It. Zayn’s poor decision to leave Bradford without a bag of any sort means he has to borrow Harry’s clothes, which hang off him in an awkward kind of way that makes Harry worry for the health of his heart.

Zayn looks a little swamped in Harry’s Calvin Klein jumper, admittedly, but he also won the genetic lottery twenty-three years ago and as such, it looks like Calvin deliberately made the jumper enormous just for Zayn to wear. Harry watches him walk around London with an almost indecent sense of pride.

They catch a cab to Regent’s Park and just walk around for a while until they reach the pond, cold hand in cold hand, like they’re actually boyfriends out for a Friday afternoon stroll. Harry takes a picture of Zayn feeding the ducks scraps of his sandwich, a look of joy on his face most commonly seen on five year olds, and, perhaps against his better judgement, he uploads it to Instagram with a black and white filter and the caption _Malik v Mallard_. It’s the first time he’s ever Instagrammed Zayn.

‘Harry?’ Zayn says from over by the bank, looking over his shoulder to smile at him.

‘Yeah?’

‘Do you want to get a pedalo?’

Harry blinks at him. ‘No?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because we’re not _kids_?’

Zayn shakes his head, closing the space between them and slipping his arms around Harry’s waist. ‘Who says?’

‘The universe?’

‘It’ll be fun!’ Zayn insists, beaming, and Harry melts a little bit. Zayn notices – of course he does – and he plants a small kiss on Harry’s nose. ‘Hey, I have an idea.’

‘Is it as bad as the pedalo idea?’

Zayn ignores him. ‘For the next few days, why don’t you live _my_ way?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I did stuff your way,’ Zayn says slowly, slipping a hand under Harry’s jumper to rest against his bare back. ‘Went to the parties and lunches and galleries. Why don’t you try my way?’

Harry bites his lip, pretending to consider it. In truth doing things _Zayn’s way_ is a dangerous concept, because Zayn’s way involves a lot of drifting about with no idea of where he’s going, but Zayn looks so excited there’s no way Harry could say no.

So that’s how Harry and Zayn end up squashed together in a pedalo, in the middle of winter, squawking like kids in the playground. Every part of Harry is cold, even the hollow under his cheekbones, even his eyelids, but Zayn’s laughing so much he can’t breathe, and they’re fighting over the steering rod, and Zayn keeps gripping Harry’s thigh every time he nearly tumbles back into the water.

For a while Harry forgets he’s not even thirty yet and already divorced, a fact that has been weighing rather heavily recently, and he says as much to Zayn afterwards as they walk to Hampstead Heath and get crepes and hot chocolate from a little outdoor stand, huddling together for warmth.

‘Well, you’re nearly thirty,’ Zayn says helpfully, his eyes dancing. ‘So, you know. Not that far off.’

‘Fuck you,’ Harry grumbles and Zayn just laughs, knocking his hip against Harry’s.

Zayn eyes Harry contemplatively. ‘This is the real you,’ Zayn says, licking some sugar off his thumb before adding confidently, ‘I know the real you.’

Harry pauses, blinking slowly. ‘You do?’

Zayn nods. ‘The real you wants to go out and have fun and do stupid shit, like you used to, you know? But you’ve got bogged down with everything that’s happened, got yourself all worried and stressed and self-conscious, and it’s making you feel old. You’re not old, Harry. You’re not old.’

‘Should I cancel my freedom pass, then?’ Harry says weakly, and Zayn laughs but squeezes Harry’s hip firmly, not giving up.

‘You can still enjoy life in New York and be rich and famous and brilliant and know how to say Lan-vin properly _and_ be the old Harry. You can still piss about in Europe and have sex with Latvian pornstars if you want.’

‘I told you before,’ Harry insists, rolling his eyes. ‘A homemade sex tape on Pornhub didn’t make her a pornstar. And it’s Lanvin.’

‘Same difference,’ Zayn says with a shrug. ‘You think I see the world different to everyone else, but I just see it better.’

Harry’s heart feels strangely fragile. ‘Okay.’

‘Do you promise that after this, you won’t…’ Zayn trails off, nibbling at his lower lip. ‘You won’t, you know. Not see me for three months again.’

It would have been more appropriate to say _let me down again_ , since that’s the implication, but Harry decides not to dwell on it and smiles instead, reaching for Zayn’s fingers and squeezing them. ‘Promise.’

‘Good,’ Zayn says with a satisfied smile, and then he pulls Harry in for a kiss, licking the sugar off his lips, off his teeth, off the inside of his mouth.

 

+++

 

Zayn’s next item on the agenda is that they go to a _real club_ , not the cornered off, velvet-boothed places Harry took him in New York. Neither of them know any _real clubs_ in London, because Harry’s used to weird, sleazy places like The Box and Zayn’s never been to London before. Harry considers asking Gemma, but decides against it when he remembers Gemma will probably invite herself, her politician boyfriend, and all of her uni friends along, and so instead they take to Google.

According to the internet, Fabric is decidedly too druggy, KOKO too obvious, Ministry of Sound too chavvy, and so eventually they decide on a fairly dodgy looking place in Shoreditch. Zayn's excitement at the idea of 'dodgy' should have been a warning.

Harry’s immediately ill at ease when they arrive. Everyone seems to be eighteen at the most, severely underdressed for the practically arctic conditions outside, and on a mission to fuck the nearest person with a pulse. Too many hungry, drunken eyes flicker towards Zayn for Harry’s liking, but Zayn doesn’t seem to notice. He drags Harry through the crowd excitedly, his fingers wrapped tight around Harry’s wrist.

To his credit, Harry tries. He smiles at anyone who catches his eye, makes polite comments about the tasteful décor, which is incredibly generous and makes Zayn roll his eyes, but the vague look of disgust that his face falls into when another teenager nearly pours their drink down his front is confirmation enough that Harry thinks this club is shit.

Which it is. This club is the shittest of the shit, a hole in the wall in the way that clubs aren't meant to be, sticky floors and even stickier clientele. The music pulses and builds in a way that’s glaringly sexual and only hyping up the rabid crowd, and is also nothing that Harry recognises despite the fact he’s probably met most of the names on the playlist. But this is what Zayn knows, and Harry can tell he loves it already.

‘How you coping, millionaire?’ Zayn asks Harry as they lean against the bar and wait to be served.

Harry licks his lips, hesitating, and then asks feebly, ‘Reckon there's a VIP booth?’

‘Fuck off, you bourgeoisie twat.’

‘I'm joking!’ Harry defends, eyes wide, only half telling the truth.

But Zayn’s right; he’s done done clubbing Harry's way – VIP booths with satin seats and drinking champagne from the bottle. Harry can't always have everything his way, and since Harry finds it impossible to say no to Zayn, here they are.

Zayn orders them two double vodka cokes and tries to pay himself, fumbling in his pockets for spare change, before Harry produces his card, offering it to the barman between two fingers.

‘How do you always get that out so quickly?’ Zayn grumbles. ‘Is there a secret pocket in your skin or something? A fucking MasterCard flap.’

‘I'm secretly a mutant.’

‘It's not much of a secret.’

Harry pretends to be offended. ‘Don't be mean.’

‘You could have let me buy them,’ Zayn mutters, not meeting Harry’s eye, and he’s definitely sulking.

Harry sighs. ‘Zayn –’

‘It's a couple of vodka cokes, Harry. I’m capable of buying that.’

Harry ignores him and catches the straw between his teeth, hollowing his cheeks as he sucks on it, eyes wide and innocent. ‘Very nice,’ he approves after swallowing.

‘Hardly Moët is it?’

‘Now who's moaning?’ Zayn doesn’t reply, so Harry leans forward and presses his lips to Zayn’s. ‘You can buy the next round, okay? Compromise. Equality. Freedom. All of those.’

‘Shut up,’ Zayn says, but he seems heartened, and Harry grins at him.

They stay at the bar until they’re drunk enough to not be alarmed by the drunkenness of everyone else, which is apparently the benchmark for clubs like this. After the vodka cokes they do two jagerbombs each, and then a round of tequila, licking the salt off the back of each other’s palms, and Harry’s just about to flag down the barman for more when Zayn grips Harry’s arm tightly, eyes wide with excitement.

‘I love this song!’

‘Who is it?’

‘Kendrick Lamar you fucking _Martian_!’

Zayn grabs Harry’s elbow and yanks him through the crowd, worming his way through the crowd with alarming, ninja-like expertise. Harry, by contrast, bumps into everyone, creating domino catastrophes of unsuspecting members of the public, cringing into Zayn’s back and bleating sorry to anyone who’ll listen. Zayn’s only satisfied when they’re near enough to the front that they can see the DJ, and then he starts leaping about on the spot in a gracefully manic kind of way. Harry joins in, spurred on by the alcohol, and somehow, he finds himself having fun.

‘Can you catch an STI just by touching people?’ Harry asks Zayn when he throws his arms around Harry’s neck and sways about on the spot with him to one of the most upbeat songs Harry’s possibly ever heard, the tempo of which seems almost inhuman in speed.

‘Only if you’re a judgemental wanker,’ Zayn says, squeezing Harry’s bum, and Harry laughs. Zayn laughs too, and then they’re just laughing in the middle of the club, being jostled and accidentally groped by sweaty, hormonal youths. And Harry’s having more fun than he has in a long time.

It gets even _better_ – astronomically, indescribably better – when the DJ barks ‘ _here’s one for all you lovers of a bit of cheese!_ ’ and the opening chimes of Toploader’s _Dancing in the Moonlight_ filters through the Sahara-hot club. Harry actually shrieks, gripping at Zayn’s waist and then his face, eyes wide with inexorable joy.

‘I fucking _love_ this song!’ Harry bellows, and then there’s no stopping him; he’s flailing about like a dad at a wedding, hips swivelling, arms thrashing, head thrown back to scream along. Zayn joins in, admittedly in a much more attractive way then Harry, and the pair of them just throw themselves around the dancefloor in a drunken blur of limbs until the song changes.

And Harry’s not sure if their dancing attracted the attention of the DJ, or whether they’ve reached the part of the night where all the people concerned with looking cool have gone home with someone already, but suddenly every single song is amazing – Whitney’s _I Wanna Dance With Somebody_ follows, and then _Never Gonna Give You Up, No Scrubs, Crazy in Love, Spice Up Your Life_ , the fucking Backstreet Boys’ _Everybody_. Zayn and Harry scream the words out, twirling each other around and jokingly grinding on the other until Harry feels like he might collapse from the heat and he has to drag Zayn from the crowd.

Zayn’s laughing delightedly, bouncing on his feet as he squeezes Harry’s hand tightly, and suddenly, Harry’s not so concerned with rehydration. He shoves his way past crowds of girls in heels and boys in snapbacks, past couples making out in the way of absolutely everybody, until he spots the flickering neon lights for the toilets, and he drags Zayn as though pulling a sack of potatoes until finally – _finally_ – they’re there.

Harry shoves Zayn into a stall, locks the door, and then presses himself into Zayn completely, licking his way into his mouth and smiling when Zayn gasps and grips at Harry’s bum, grinding against him.

Their foreheads are both wet with sweat, their t-shirts clinging limply to their chests, but Harry can’t care, and he drops to his knees on the dirty floor without a care in the world for his designer jeans.

‘ _Harry_ ,’ Zayn says, stunned, but Harry just grins, tugging Zayn’s jeans to his ankles and breathing hotly over the bulge in his underwear. ‘Who – who are _you_?’

‘This is me, baby,’ Harry says, scratching his nails up Zayn’s thighs, tonguing the heart on his hip. ‘’S all me.’

Zayn smirks, lacing his fingers through Harry’s hair and leaning his head back against the greasy wall tiling when Harry takes him in his mouth. ‘Knew it,’ says Zayn.

 

+++

 

Harry wakes up the next morning with an elephantine headache and a mouth so dry he might as well have eaten sand instead of a kebab on the way home last night.

He tries to get up and stumble to the toilet but every inch of him aches and his vision spins dangerously, so he flops back onto the bed, groaning.

‘Did I die?’ he croaks when Zayn pokes him between the shoulder blades and then kisses the nape of his neck.

‘No,’ Zayn says, an evident smile on his face as he kisses along Harry’s shoulder. ‘You did get us kicked out of the club, though. And then off the 55 bus when you threw up on the upper deck.’

Harry covers his face with his hands. ‘Oh _fuck_.’

‘It was funny, I promise,’ Zayn says, squeezing Harry’s hip. ‘You got a kebab right after, you were fine.’

‘That’s the only part I remember.’ Harry shifts to face Zayn – groaning all the while – and squints at him suspiciously. ‘Why did we get kicked out of the club?’

Zayn reddens a little, glancing away from Harry. ‘Because they, um. Caught us. In the toilet.’

‘Doing what?’

Zayn swallows, smiling with embarrassment. ‘Well you were sort of, like. You know. Sucking me off.’

Harry stares at Zayn, letting this sink in, and then he snorts out a laugh, burying his face in Zayn’s shoulder. ‘Fuck my life.’

‘It’s also, like, the afternoon. I went to the shops to get us lunch already.’

Harry groans, grips Zayn tighter.

‘I got us cool stuff, though, stuff I miss in New York. Digestives and Marmite and crumpets and Jaffa Cakes. Pink wafers, flying saucers –’

‘You’re making me feel sick.’

‘– and Wotsits and Skips as well. The Wotsits are only for the Marmite, though, ‘cos I dip them –’

Harry gags into Zayn’s shoulder and then sits up abruptly, his stomach churning. ‘I’m _actually_ going to be sick.’

Zayn’s eyebrows pucker in concern. ‘Oh, Harry –’

Harry just about makes it to the toilet bowl, and upon emptying the contents of his stomach while Zayn holds his hair back and rubs a soothing hand over Harry’s back. Harry spends the rest of the afternoon splayed out in bed feeling sorry for himself, whilst Zayn sits cross-legged next to Harry and eats almost all of their British picnic feast, which also includes Mr Kipling Battenberg and Bakewell tarts. They switch on the TV for background noise, and Harry has his first ever experience of shitty afternoon TV, _Homes Under the Hammer_ and _Escape to the Country_ and _Jeremy Kyle_ and _Deal or No Deal._

They kiss a lot, too, all afternoon, just kissing for kissing’s sake in between Zayn’s snacks. Zayn lies half across Harry’s chest, or leans down when Harry’s head is resting in his lap, and his mouth tastes like cherries and sugar, his tongue sweet against Harry’s. He holds Harry’s face carefully, stroking his thumb across Harry’s pale cheek, and they kiss until the corners of Harry’s mouth have gone raw from being scratched by Zayn’s stubble, until Harry can’t even watch the TV anymore and just takes to staring at Zayn dreamily, waiting for Zayn to kiss him again.

He’s stupidly in love with Zayn, a rabid, teenage love, the kind of love that has him grabbing for Zayn when he gets up to go to the loo or grab a packet of Gummy Bears – which are German, not British, but Zayn excused them as an impulse buy at the checkout. And Zayn still stares at Harry in that intense, adoring way he does, but he also seems different, more sure of himself, and Harry can’t tell whether that’s because they’re away from New York, or whether it’s because Harry’s changed, or whether it’s because Zayn has, since they’ve been apart.

Zayn tells him about his Christmas – which his family don’t really celebrate, but just do it for the presents and the tree – and how his mum made Zayn’s favourite ever food, aloo gosht, for Christmas dinner instead of a roast as a homecoming treat. Zayn’s little sister has a boyfriend, he tells Harry with a snarl. His older sister’s recently engaged. His youngest wants to be an artist like Zayn.

Zayn and Louis made up a while ago, and Niall gets on well with both him and Eleanor. Zayn looks at Harry seriously, Battenburg crumbs around his lips, and says:

‘I was being an idiot with you before. It’s not anything you did. But I spoke to my sisters about it. You’re like my first…’ – he hesitates over the word _love_ – ‘my first a lot of things. And I sort of drowned in it. Like, I thought – think – about you all the time, but I can’t forget about my friends and everything just because some fit guy in a Lan-vin suit wants to fuck me.’

Harry nods dumbly, his heart almost fucking bursting out of his chest like some cartoon, and all he can think of to say is, ‘You mean Lanvin.’

Zayn smiles and carefully separates his Gummy Bears into piles according to colour, and then, just as Harry’s about to die, counts them, his lips moving silently as he does so. Harry has to actually wrap his arms around himself so he doesn’t do something stupid like throw himself at Zayn and bite marks into his collarbones and make him promise to love Harry forever.

‘You told your sisters about me?’ Harry asks softly, only to stop himself saying _you are gorgeous and smart and amazing and I love every single thing about you. Even the hairs on your arms. Even the back of your neck. Even the curve of your knee._

Zayn runs a hand through his hair. ‘Um. Yeah.’

‘And?’

‘They think you’re too old for me,’ Zayn mumbles quietly. ‘And also, you’re… You know. Divorced.’

Harry blinks at him, his heart plummeting to somewhere near his toes. ‘Oh.’

‘They weren’t exactly happy to hear you were married, and, like, with me. At the same time.’

Harry gulps, unease bubbling in his empty stomach. ‘Well that’s… not what I wanted to hear.’

Zayn reaches for Harry with both hands and draws him close to his chest, pressing his nose into Harry’s neck. ‘But they also think you’re super hot. They Googled you.’ Harry feels Zayn smile into Harry’s neck at the irony of that. ‘And when I told them about you, they said it’s nice that you’re into art and books and stuff. The same things as me. Waliyha said _we suit each other._ ’

‘She did?’ Harry says, and he feels like he’s being strangled.

‘Yeah.’ Zayn kisses Harry’s neck and then pulls back, his lips curving up in that sweet way they do that makes Harry want to cry. ‘Look at us, being all sad and mumbly.’

‘I want them to like me,’ Harry says – mumbles – stroking his hand across Zayn’s bare knee. ‘That’s important, Zayn. We’re adults. That’s important.’

‘I know. And they will.’ He presses his lips to Harry’s, softly at first and then harder, curling his tongue against Harry’s upper-lip and smiling when Harry’s breath catches in his throat. ‘Promise.’

And then he pulls Harry towards the bed, kisses him with that sugary-sweet mouth that reminds Harry of a drawing Zayn once did, a castle made of sugar, wine gums for stained glass windows, surrounded by a chocolate moat with a liquorice Loch Ness monster lurking inauspiciously in its depths.

 

+++

 

Harry watches Zayn flail around to switch off his alarm and then collapses back onto the mattress in a blur of raven black hair and pink, puffy lips. And then, after a beat, Harry watches as Zayn reaches for him. He grasps at air, blindly patting at the empty bed beside him, before he sits up, a birds-nest of hair, squinted eyes scanning the room. He grins sleepily at Harry when he sees him, and then reaches out an arm.

‘What are you doing over there?’ he asks, voice thick and drowny. ‘Come back to bed.’

Harry smiles, slow and warm, and then crosses the bed to sit beside Zayn, the carrier bag clutched in his fist.

‘You look nice,’ Zayn approves, his voice still sticky with sleep, hand sliding up and down Harry’s thigh. He’s wearing jeans and a leaf patterned shirt, but the compliment makes him swell up proudly all the same. ‘What time’s it?’

’10,’ Harry says. ‘My flight’s in six hours.’

‘Where have you been?’

‘Shopping. I got you a present.’ Harry smiles at Zayn in what he hopes is an encouraging way. ‘Well. Presents. Plural.’

A small, confused frown pulls at Zayn’s brows, and then he rubs a hand over his face. ‘Why?’ he asks flatly.

‘It’s all little things,’ Harry clarifies quickly. ‘Stuff for you to take back to New York.’ He reaches into the bag and withdraws the first item, placing it carefully on Zayn’s lap. ‘Marmite.’

Zayn runs his finger along the corrugated ridge of the yellow lid, his lips pressed together firmly.

‘Wotsits, because you’re a heathen,’ Harry goes on, fishing it out and passing it to Zayn. ‘A case for your new iPhone.’

His hands shake a little as he passes this one to Zayn, and finally, Zayn cracks a smile, examining the case with a delicate kind of gratitude. ‘Batman. That’s ace.’

Harry’s heart swells exponentially in his chest, and he plunges his hand back into the carrier bag more eagerly this time. ‘These are some postcards,’ Harry says, explaining the obvious as Zayn takes them and flicks through them. ‘You’ve never been to London and we didn’t even do any of the tourist-y things. So I thought maybe… postcards would make up for it.’

Zayn nods seriously. ‘Yeah. They do, yeah.’

‘That one’s my favourite place,’ Harry says, pointing to the card at the top of the pile of Millennium Bridge. ‘I’ll take you there, one day.’

Zayn peers up at Harry through his eyelashes, almost shyly, and smiles.

Harry delves back into the bag. ‘What else… Oh! A disposable camera. I don’t even know why I got this, I just thought…’ He trails off, flushing slightly, but Zayn stares at him with calm, unhurried expectation, so Harry continues, ‘I thought maybe when you go home today, you could take pictures of your sisters to show me. And your parents, if you like. It’s just, you know. You don’t have a Facebook, so I can’t stalk you.’

Zayn looks down at the camera, and then back at Harry, and then at the camera again. ‘Yeah, all right.’

Harry smiles, and then reaches in for the last item, fingers hesitating around it for a moment before he shoves it at Zayn, quickly, before he can change his mind.

‘I know you already have one,’ Harry says, watching as Zayn blinks down at the book in confusion. 'But I promised you I’d finish it, and I did. I finished it on the plane to Spain before Christmas.’

Zayn licks his lips, and some sort of emotion that Harry can’t decipher clouds his expression. ‘You remembered.’

‘Yeah, of course.’ Zayn fails to say anything, just stares down at the memorabilia in his lap like Harry’s just swept up all the stars and dumped them on the duvet, and so to fill the silence, Harry blathers, ‘There wasn’t enough about the cat for my liking, but – maybe that’s just me. I don’t tend to read in the most conventional way.’

Zayn laughs, eyes wide and bright as he looks up at Harry at last, and Harry’s heart thumps like there’s a brass band warming up in there.

‘No, you don’t.’

‘Look inside,’ Harry instructs, pointing at the book cover.

Zayn smiles, looking almost excited now, before flipping open to the first page. The envelope Harry had tucked in there drops to the sheets, but Zayn neglects it for the minute, instead gazing down at the list written in Harry’s messy, block-caps print:

_Promises I made to Zayn:_  
_to tell the truth_  
_to throw away Alex’s vinyl_  
_to meet (charm, impress, blow away) his friends_  
_to go up the Empire State Building_  
_to watch all the Batmans_  
_to finish the Book about the Cat_

Harry watches Zayn read nervously, twisting his rings around his fingers so he doesn’t grab the book from Zayn’s hands and slam it shut. Zayn reads it carefully, over and over again, so many times that Harry’s starting to squirm uncomfortably, and after what feels like an age he reaches for the envelope and tears off the seal. Harry notices Zayn’s fingers are trembling a bit too.

Zayn upturns the envelope, and the pair of them watch as the notes plummet down onto the bed in one, ungracious splatter. In films, money drifts in the air like feathers, dances about in the wind, but in real life, it falls heavily in one big, uncharismatic heap.

There’s a long, dense silence, in which Zayn stares at the money and Harry stares at Zayn, and neither of them move at all. Harry’s not even sure whether Zayn blinks, but when he finally looks up at Harry, Zayn’s smile is slipping off his face almost in slow motion, a strange sort of clarity shoving itself past clouds of delight.

‘Money,’ Zayn says slowly. ‘You’re giving me money.’

Harry swallows. ‘It’s to show that I trust you,’ he says. ‘It’s to show that I trust you, Zayn.’

Zayn just stares. ‘No,’ he says eventually, quietly. It’s poisonous, the way he says it, and it makes Harry’s eyes widen in panic.

‘Zayn, wait, just give me a minute to –’

‘What is _wrong_ with you Harry?’ Zayn asks, wrestling his way out of the duvet to stand facing Harry. He looks helplessly young, hair sticking up in every direction, shoulders curved forwards, hands clutching at his sides. ‘You think – you think you can fuck me and kiss me and say all of this shit, and then after all of that, make it about _money_?’

‘Zayn,’ Harry says pleadingly, scrambling up too. ‘Listen –’

‘I don’t _want_ your fucking money, okay? How many times do I have to tell you? I can’t keep doing this.’

Harry’s heart jolts like it’s been smacked with a golf club.

‘No, no, it’s not like that.’ Harry reaches for him desperately, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that Harry’s fully clothed, as though he’s about to run out of the door, and Zayn’s vulnerable, standing there naked and trembling. ‘I’m trying to show you that I _know_ you’re not using me for it. I’m trying to share it, don’t you see, I’m trying –’

‘I don’t give a flying _fuck_ about what you _think_ this means!’ Zayn snaps, turning away from Harry and rooting through Harry’s suitcase to find some underwear.

‘Look, I have all this money whether you like it or not –’

‘Oh, rub it in.’

‘– and, God, I just want to share it with you. Not buy you. Share it with you. Can’t you see?’

He can hear the frantic desperation in his own voice, so frenzied it’s almost embarrassing, but Zayn’s barely listening. ‘So what you’re saying is, ambushing me with a fuckload of money was a _gesture_ ,’ Zayn says icily. ‘Nice one, Harry, great job.’

Harry presses his fingers against his eye-sockets, trying to stay calm. ‘I just – I just wanted to start over, to show you that I’ve changed and that I’m not –’

‘ _Start over_? This is exactly the same thing we’ve always been talking about!’

‘No, Zayn –’

‘What kind of relationship is it, where you buy me everything and I just sit there and take it?’ Zayn asks. He’s got a jumper pulled on now, and he’s halfway through tugging jeans up one leg, but he pauses to stare at Harry expectantly. ‘How do you think that looks? How it makes me feel?’

‘Zayn –’

‘I just want you to be my _boyfriend_ , Harry! Just a normal fucking boyfriend. I don’t – I don’t want a fucking _sugardaddy_.That’s not what this is meant to be. I’m not gonna let you do that this time.’

Harry’s mouth is inexplicably dry, and he squeezes his nails into his palms to stop himself crying. ‘It’s part of my life,’ he says quietly. ‘I can’t help it. I just want you to be in my life.’

‘Bullshit.’

Harry gapes at him. ‘Why?’

‘You _left_ me,’ Zayn says, and his voice cracks. ‘Over and over again. Whenever Connie was there, you’d just disappear without a word. And I waited. And after everything, you didn’t even fight to stay. You just left.’ Zayn sniffs, swipes roughly under his nose. ‘Don’t tell me you want me everywhere. You’re the one who was always running away.’

Harry’s bottom lip wobbles, watching as Zayn gathers up all the things Harry bought him splayed out on the bed and shoves them back into the carrier bag. ‘I was scared, I thought – you know what I thought. But I’m not anymore. That’s what I’m trying to show you –’

‘Well _don’t,_ ’ Zayn says, and he sounds so sad that Harry has to swallow back a sob. ‘I love you. That’s all there is to it. You don’t have to show me anything. It’s just – it’s yours. I love you for whatever reason and I’ll – fuck, I’ll give it to you if you’d just fucking _take_ it. There’s nothing else to it. That’s it.’

‘Please –’

‘I don’t know what to say to you anymore,’ Zayn says, wiping at his face roughly, and then he pulls open the door but hesitates, staring at Harry with wet eyes. ‘Sometimes you just – you make me so _sad_ , Harry.’

And then, for what feels like the millionth time, Harry’s alone.

 

+++

 

It takes a long cry, another shower, a full English breakfast, and a lengthy phone call to his mum before Harry’s ready to drag himself to the airport.

He checks out with a heavy heart, and he can’t even bring himself to smile politely at the girl at the desk.

Harry has no idea who he is anymore. He’s a botched together version of himself – pre-Courbet and post-Courbet, pre-Alex and post-Alex, BC and AD. The two parts of himself are so disjointed that Harry’s always struggled trying to balance it. He gives too much of himself, or not enough. He keeps his heart guarded, or flings it right under someone else’s heel, begging them to stamp on it. He wants someone who’ll love him, the whole of him, but how can they when he’s already been severed in half before? What’ll happen if he’s quartered? What will be left of him then?

Harry tosses himself into a cab and bleats _Heathrow, please_ , pouting like someone out of a Dickens novel. The thought of having to negotiate through disgruntled tourists and crying children and old ladies depresses him, and he makes a mental note to check the price of a private jet.

It’s not like he’s got anyone else to spend money on.

_Fuck._

When they pull into Heathrow, Harry doesn’t have the heart to mess about with change; he shoves random notes through the little plastic hole before heaving himself out of the cab and dragging his suitcase after him glumly.

The airport seems endless, miles and miles of marble flooring before he’s even reached security. He tries to keep himself contained as he stands in the gargantuan security queue, but of course the alarm goes off when Harry walks through the body scanner, and he has to remove his shoes and all his rings, and then his necklace, and then his belt, and by the time he’s put everything back on he’s nearly wailing in despair.

He fucks around in the duty free in the first class lounge for a while, buying himself three pairs of sunglasses because _fuck it_ , if he’s gonna die alone he might as well do it on the beach. There’s a huge bottle of vodka as well, bigger than Harry’s ever seen, and Harry stands there eyeing it for a good ten minutes before reminding himself that he just _can’t_ be the guy that gets smashed on the flight and throws up on an air stewardess, and plus, the security team are starting to eye him warily. He shuffles off, head down, heart lounging somewhere by his ankles.

After what feels like hours, he’s told to _Go to Gate_ , and Harry takes a moment to laugh when said gate turns out to be 42 of a possible 42. He says goodbye to the first class lounge and slips back into normality, walking to the gate slower than anyone’s possibly ever walked in history, dragging his feet across the floor, sniffling like a toddler, his carry-on hitting at the back of his knees pitifully.

He feels the familiar chill of anxiety settling into the air pockets between his bones, that haunting alarm of dropping your phone onto a hard surface, or remembering when you’re halfway down the road that you left the oven on. _You’re going to be alone forever_ , a horrible, grotesque voice hisses to him, and Harry’s mouth droops at the corners as he slumps on his plastic airport chair. _Forever is a long, long time._

And then, in the very distant distance, he hears his name. Not screeched, not screamed, but definitely shouted, or at the least yelled. He snaps his head up, looking around stupidly with wide eyes, but all he can see is worn-out mothers and a man with a frustrating comb over.

‘Harry!’ he hears again, still just as far away, and he grips the arms of his seat and cranes his neck over the ceaseless crowd, his heart hammering with _Is it? No, it couldn’t be. But it might be! No, it can’t be –_

Harry pushes himself to his feet, still staring, and that’s when Harry sees Zayn. He’s hurtling through the airport corridor, a faint smudge of black hair and boot-clad feet and skinny jeans like a mirage on the horizon, but Harry knows it’s him. And he’s running, running like the kid in _Love, Actually_ except probably not as fast and without the uplifting soundtrack. In fact, forget soundtrack – the only thing Harry can hear is his startled body going into overdrive, lungs heaving like an old woman, breath trembling, heart pounding in his ears.

And Zayn’s still running, sprinting with the determination of an Olympian and sporadically shouting ‘Harry!’ with little concern for discretion, weaving his way past families with trollies and buggies. It’s quite funny, actually, because Zayn looks fucking hilarious when he runs, but that’s a story for another time.

Harry stares at him, aware that he’s also being stared at, but there’s no time to think about that. _This is a fairy-tale world. This is a fucking fairy-tale world._

Zayn trips over the wheel of a suitcase and nearly ends up falling flat on his face, but someone grabs his arm to steady him. Zayn barely stops to say thank you – he just runs and runs and runs, feet slipping, arms pumping, hair slapping him in the face, and _finally_ he skids into Gate 42, nearly upending an unsuspecting granny on his approach. And then, spotting Harry, he stops.

 _Stuff like this only happens in films_ , is the only thing Harry can think. But then, Zayn never thinks about the world like Harry – like every other boring, old person – thinks of it. He sees it in sparks, in bursts of colour and light and excitement. And maybe, after all this, he’s right.

‘Harry!’ he tries to exclaim, but it comes out like a croak and Harry can barely hear him. Zayn hovers on the spot, and Harry quite suddenly feels close to tears and also fainting.

‘Hi,’ Harry says in his approximation of a normal human. ‘You - You’re here?’

‘I bought… a flight…’ Zayn pants, stumbling towards him. If Harry were in Zayn’s position, he would have already been wheeled out in a bodybag, but Zayn seems surprisingly composed. He’s red and breathless, but not drenched in sweat and beetroot crimson like Harry is when he exercises.

‘You bought a flight?’ Harry repeats.

Zayn nods, running a hand through his hair roughly and taking another step forward. ‘To New Mexico.’

Harry frowns. ‘You’re… why are you going to New Mexico?’

In succession, Zayn looks confused, then incredulous, and then despairing. ‘I’m not going to – oh, Jesus Christ, Harry.’

Harry manfully resists the urge to break down in tears, and just nods. ‘Oh right, I see,’ Harry says casually, sticking a hand in his pocket, even though he doesn’t see whatsoever.

‘Harry,’ Zayn says, pushing his hair back from his face and staring straight at Harry with his anxious, perfect face. ‘I made an awful mistake.’

Harry takes a deep, fairly wheezy breath. ‘Oh?’

‘Yeah,’ Zayn nods. He steps closer again, until his heaving chest is only a foot away from Harry’s equally heaving chest. ‘I needed to tell you that I love you before you get on the plane, or I thought I might fucking die.’

The world momentarily shifts, all the colours inverting, the ceiling touching the floor, and Harry’s heart does something dangerous, so hopeful he has to stop himself clutching at his chest. ‘Oh,’ he says again.

‘Look, I don’t care about the money,’ Zayn says, under his breath this time, eyeing Harry with a kind of fierceness that makes Harry want to unzip Zayn and climb inside him. ‘I was just being so … so _serious_ , for fuck’s sake. Sensible. That’s not me.’

It’s not even remotely funny, but Harry’s so overwhelmed he squawks out a laugh which Zayn doesn’t mirror.

‘I know what you are. What we are,’ Zayn continues, his voice still low, his face still serious. ‘And I love you. And you can buy me all the Armani suits in the world if it makes you happy, and I’ll still love you because you know facts about ejaculate. And you nearly pissed yourself when Toploader came on in the club. And you love me.’

Zayn cracks a smile at that, a small, close-lipped smile that Harry wants to chew right off his face, and it just about breaks Harry’s heart.

‘Are you gonna say anything, then?’ Zayn asks, reaching out for Harry’s hand. He curls one index finger around Harry’s, just that, and embarrassingly, Harry might start crying a bit then. He’s not entirely sure, though, because he’s concentrating too much on Zayn, on the way Zayn’s eyes flicker between his, his slow grin. ‘I spent the money you gave me on this ticket to New Mexico, and it was a fucking fortune, so you gotta make it worth it.’

Harry gulps wetly, swallowing down the shrieks of _I love you more than the entire world_ that have wedged themselves in the crevasses of his mouth. Instead, he manages, a little shakily, ‘I, um. In Year Three they asked us what we wanted to be when we were older, and all the other kids said firemen or doctors or footballers and I said – I said loved. Just that. Loved. I’ve never lived that one down.’

Zayn laughs, a proper, tongue against his teeth laugh, and Harry has the urge to lie down. Instead, he mops at his face with his free hand, and then says, ‘So, I just – I can’t believe – because you’ve kind of, like, just literally made all my fucking dreams come true, Zayn. All of them.’

Zayn blinks at Harry calmly for what feels like the longest few seconds in history, before he lets go of Harry’s hand. Harry thinks seriously about grabbing for him, but then Zayn reaches inside his coat pocket and withdraws a book. A Murakami book.  
The Book About the Cat.

‘For you.’

Harry gulps, and then nods fiercely. ‘Yeah. I finished it.’

Zayn licks his lips, looking at Harry and then at the book again. ‘I know. But I – just look inside. You’ll see.’

Harry eyes Zayn carefully before flipping open to the first page to survey the list of promises he wrote to Zayn. That list has been crossed out, though, a harsh biro strikethrough. And underneath, there’s a new list.

_The only promises I need you to make now:_  
_to trust and be trusted_  
_to love me everyday_  
_to know that you’re loved back_  
_to learn that you deserve it infinitely_  
_to remember all of that, even when you’re scared_  
_and to ask to be reminded when you forget_

Harry reads the list carefully, over and over again, so many times that Zayn’s starting to squirm uncomfortably beside him, but when Harry finally looks up his eyes are sparkling.

‘Promise,’ he says as steadily as he can, which turns out to be not very steady at all.

‘Harry Styles,’ Zayn says, and the way he says it makes Harry’s name sound like a song.

Harry was already red, but he flushes so much that even the tips of his ears heat up, a slow, enormous smile spreading across his face. ‘Yes, Zayn?’ he goes to say, but Zayn grabs Harry’s face in both hands and smiles into Harry’s mouth before he gets the chance.

If this were a book, or a film, the rest of the gate would erupt into applause, and the older ladies around them would start crying, and someone would take a picture of them and splash it on the internet until it went viral. But true to form the British public, inherently averse to public displays of affection, all look away with sniffy disapproval, and Harry has to pull away before he and Zayn can kiss properly because his nose is running.

There’s no soaring music, no cheers, no fireworks. There’s just Harry and Zayn, grinning at each other tearfully like a pair of idiots. Zayn has one of the best imaginations Harry’s ever known, one of the best imaginations in the _world_ , but right now, he doesn’t even need to use it. This is more than good enough.

People start hauling themselves off their plastic chairs, grabbing at their bags with impatient fingers, wrapping their hands around the forearms of their small children. A little girl with braids skips after her father, dragging her yellow cardigan on the floor behind her, inadvertently gathering dirt and dust in its hood.

Outside, a plane pulls out from the gate, reverses in that slow, tortoise-like way they do before crawling off towards the runway. Ground-control, stuffed into high-vis jackets, flap their luminescent paddles about like they’re enthusiastically waving off an auntie after a taxing Christmas. The sky is a dull, dirty marmalade, the insipid dish-water after a spag-bol rather than the artificial clarity of one of Zayn’s orange gummy bears.

Zayn holds Harry’s hand as they wait calmly for the last call.

**Author's Note:**

> Or - the one where things would have been so much easier if Zayn had just Googled him.
> 
> Thanks to K for being a creative genius, supportive cheerleader and generally just an A* friend. You've heard it before buuuuut you're the best :)


End file.
